To Love and to Kill (10 page)

CHAPTER 24

EMILIA WAS WITH
Detective Sergeant Brian Spivey at her mother's house in Boardman, Florida, an Orange Lakeside small town just north of McIntosh, Reddick and Ocala. But they were not at Emilia's for a social visit or a break from Emilia being questioned. Spivey and Emilia were conducting a “walk-through” of that property, specifically the abandoned trailer in the backyard. A lot had gone on behind the scenes with several detectives working the case as Buie and Spivey kept their focus on questioning Josh and Emilia. The MCSO had learned many new bits of information about the case overnight, all of which pointed to one conclusion.

The house was a lime green clapboard, small, box-style ranch, with obvious roof decay (a blue tarp covered a portion of it). The house required some much-needed renovating or, rather, a large bulldozer to push it down so they could start over. Paint crumbled off the clapboards, the doors, the windowpanes. It seemed that invasive vines had overtaken the back of the home and sections of the carport. To the right of the front door were two signs:
PRIVATE—KEEP OUT
and
BEWARE OF DOG.
There were several ficus trees loaded with hanging Spanish moss, giving the yard your typical Deep South feel, as if Spivey and Emilia were wading through the swamps of Louisiana.

Spivey and Emilia were outside now, in the back, standing near the trailer they had talked about at Major Crimes. That trailer, located not far from the house (maybe a two-minute walk), had also seen better days. It had a film of mildew and organic growth all over the outside. It was white at one time, but now had taken on a greenish, black, moldy color. Much of it had been overcome by brush and weeds. There were beautiful palm trees all around, but it was hard to see them because the forest had grown in so thickly.

Revealing a fact she had held back until now, Emilia explained how she had walked out there just after Heather went missing and noticed that the door was closed. It seemed to Major Crimes that every time they spoke to Emilia, they learned more about this case—a fact that told Spivey and Buie that Emilia was holding out and possibly knew what had happened.

“I opened the door and came in,” Emilia clarified.

“Was there anything outside?” Spivey wanted to know. (Though he didn't let on to her, during this interaction, Spivey believed Emilia was playing the role of
“Oh, my gosh . . . I cannot believe this is happening. I had no idea. I didn't know what Josh is capable of. . . . I'm afraid of him”.
)

“Her stories began to sound self-serving,” Spivey said later, “which made me think that she was involved in some way. She played the role of the poor, little, innocent girl.”

It was all bullshit.

“Glass,” Emilia answered Spivey's question, “. . . and I looked down and I saw glass, and I came in and that's when I looked up and I saw the broken window.”

It was that broken window initially sparking Emilia's interest, she explained to Spivey as they stepped into the trailer. She had walked by and noticed the broken glass and eventually looked inside the trailer to see if there was anything out of place. That is, the broken window was the impetus for her to go inside the trailer—it led her to believe something was wrong. Or something had happened inside.

Spivey expressed some concern after Emilia revealed how she and her mother had gone out into the trailer the previous week (the week before her interviews with the MCSO) to move a desk.

What were they doing?
he thought.

The timing seemed odd.

Or maybe convenient.

With a quick cursory look inside the trailer, however, once Spivey walked in, he could tell that the family definitely used it as a storage facility. There were bags of clothes, bikes, toys, garbage, old bed frames, furniture, boxes of diapers, old electrical appliances, shoes, coolers, art supplies and crafts items, box springs, a refrigerator, empty food boxes, cleaning products, suitcases, and other household furnishings strewn all over the place, even stacked in the corners, on top of tables and chairs, some turned over as if someone had ransacked the place. Emilia told Spivey she had moved the desk and some other items “to get to the kids' clothes,” which were in boxes. It was the main reason why she and her mom had gone out to the trailer to begin with.

Now it made sense.

But there was something inside the trailer she saw on that day, Emilia explained as they walked around, that was shocking.

Something terrible.

Something horrific.

Spivey asked Emilia to elaborate.

“I just kept walking and that's when I came in here”—another room inside the trailer—“and I saw her in the chair.... She was taped to it. I just kind of stopped for a minute. I didn't know what to think or what to do. And then I just went up to her and I was checking for a pulse.”

Saw
her
? Heather? Was Emilia now saying she had seen Heather strapped to a chair and checked her body for a pulse?

Quite the revelation Emilia had been holding on to.

Spivey turned a corner, walking down a short hallway, and there in front of him was a black desk chair, some used gray duct tape on the floor nearby, and a large, black, leaf-type plastic bag next to the tape. They were not simply tossed into this section of the trailer like all of the other junk; these items stood out. Something had happened here. A space had been cleared: the chair in the middle, a blanket or sheet of some sort on the floor, next to the bag, and the tape. It had a Mafia feel to it, as though a hit man had put a snitch in a chair and had tortured him before killing the son of a bitch.

Spivey looked at Emilia.
What the hell happened in here?

CHAPTER 25

IF THAT HAD
been some sort of admission from Josh Fulgham, it was poorly worded and vague, to say the least. Detective Buie needed more than “Well, say I did something to her—I didn't have
nothing
to do with it.”

In the scope of the night and the interviews he'd conducted with Josh, Buie wondered, just what in the hell did this mean? Was Josh trying to say he knew where Heather was, what happened, but he had no hand in getting her there? How could he expect the MCSO to buy both: Josh had done something to Heather, but he didn't have anything to do with it at the same time?

“That's fine . . . ,” the detective said at one point, clearly frustrated yet again at Josh's unwillingness to be straight with him.

“What would happen to me, though?” Josh wanted to know.

Buie explained that he didn't want to make any promises. All he needed from Josh was for him to show Major Crimes where Heather's body was located. That was the most important action Josh could take for himself at this point. Stop all the nonsense of Heather being kept captive somewhere. Buie indicated that they all knew Heather was never coming home. She was dead. So there was no need to talk as if she had been kidnapped by James Acome and his buddy and was being held in a warehouse somewhere, like some rich man's daughter would be. That was all nonsense.

Get to the damn truth.

“I'm worried about losing my babies for life,” Josh said. Then he changed his story once again, adding, “I don't know what they did with her, but I can find out. I give you my word. I can find out.”

It took Buie some time to explain to Josh that nothing else mattered except locating Heather. He ignored Josh's previous statement and instead asked: “Is she in the water? Is she in the dirt? Is she in a building? Is she in a car?”

Where the hell
is
she?

Josh went back to insisting that all he needed was some time alone with Emilia and he could get out of her what James Acome and his buddy had done to Heather. He was certain of it. Emilia knew something, Josh kept saying.

Buie asked Josh if he actually believed and thought James Acome and the other guy were holding Heather. It sounded ridiculous the way Buie put it. It was so asinine that Buie didn't even want to talk about it anymore. You could almost hear Buie thinking:
Come on, Josh . . . you're a seasoned criminal—you have been fingered, friend.

“You think they got her somewhere for thirty days and they're feeding her?” Buie speculated with a touch of sarcastic impatience in his tone. There was nothing worse for a man in Josh's position than to patronize an irritated, fatigued detective on the cusp of getting his man.

“I cannot see nobody killing [her],” Josh said.

“But you
know
she's dead—you
know
she's dead, Josh.”

“Man, I
don't
know. . . .”

Buie found it hard to believe that James Acome, a man he had interviewed earlier that day himself, had a motive to kill Heather. He wanted Josh to humor him with his idea of a motive.

Josh said, “If they did, it would be for getting laid.”

Rape?

No way.

“James was
with
her!” Buie pointed out. “He was
living
with her.”

“They split up that day, man,” Josh said. “She put his ass out.”

Now Josh was trying to say it was revenge?

Buie wasn't buying it.

Josh said, “Listen . . . listen ... they split up that day. She was getting rid of him because he was trying to take over everything, and I told her, ‘Heather . . . there's something else. He was fucking a fourteen-year-old little girl.' ... I told her that. . . .”

Buie recalled an interview with James Acome, which the MCSO had done, wherein James had admitted that Josh would say something like this, but James had said it was a sixteen-year-old girl. Perfectly legal. (Acome had never been charged with a crime even remotely connected to young girls.)

Buie made a good point when he next said: “He ain't been convicted of it.” The detective was somewhat disappointed in Josh's feeble attempt to claim James Acome and his friend had kidnapped Heather. He kept telling Josh the MCSO wasn't buying his pack of lies anymore and Buie, personally, was sick of it. They had caught Josh, time and again, in lies. Time was running out for Joshua Fulgham, Buie made perfectly clear. Josh needed to come clean with what he knew or there wasn't much left that Buie could do for him.

Then Buie made the suggestion that Josh knew where Heather was because he'd had something to do with murdering her.

Suddenly things had just gotten very serious for Josh Fulgham.

“I didn't do that . . . ,” Josh balked.

Buie said he was done. He was going out to find where Emilia was.

CHAPTER 26

JOSHUA FULGHAM HAD
talked himself into a corner of problems that the MCSO was not willing to hear. Josh insisted that all he needed to do was speak with Emilia and he could tell them where Heather was and would clear everything up.

The MCSO wasn't biting, though.

“You need to take us to that body,” a detective who had stepped in after Buie walked out told Josh. “You need to take us to where she's at.”

“I can't do that ... until I talk to [Emilia].”

“Josh, you can't.”

That ship had sailed, the detective made clear, telling Josh, “She's denying the whole thing.”

Josh continued to say he didn't know what had happened.

Buie came back into the room.

“Josh, she's telling me that you're full of crap,” the other detective reiterated, referring to Emilia, as Buie got settled.

“Full of it,” Buie added.

Josh slipped down into his chair. They clearly had him on the ropes. The lies Josh had told all night were catching up with him. It's one reason why cops allow a suspect to lie their way through an interview without being challenged (at first)—because sooner or later, the suspect cannot keep track of the lies. And that was the spot Buie and his team believed Josh Fulgham was now in.

“Sit up, sit up,” Buie told Josh.

Josh insisted he did not know where Heather's body was located.

Buie told him repeatedly that they were not accepting that statement any longer.

Both detectives started to badger Josh, coming at him from both sides. “You know where's she at.... Just tell us . . . just tell us. . . .”

Josh complained of being sleepy. He said he wanted to go back to his cell. Josh said: “I don't know where the body is.... I haven't done anything. I did nothing to her.”

“You are the
last
person that was with her,” Buie said.

Josh snapped: “Damn, I should not have . . . fuck!”

“You shouldn't have been
what
?”

“With the bitch, man . . .
damn.
”

“Tell me about it.”

“Fuck her!”

“Tell me . . .”

“It's time to sleep.”

“Tell me about her, Josh.” As any expert interrogator in the same position would do, Buie appealed to Josh's anger, and what was potentially churning in his mind. It was time for Buie to take a real crack at him. This was the opening Buie had been waiting on. Clearly, Josh was becoming angry with Heather as he sat there. Rage was building. Buie fed off it and used it against Josh, banking on what the MCSO believed to be a motive.

“She was taking your kids away!” Buie shouted.

“She couldn't take them from
me. . . .
”

Josh then ranted about Heather and how he had always gone back to her—no matter what. He'd demand she toss out whichever man was living with her at the time after they split up and he would move back in. This seesaw love affair went on for eleven years. Josh loved the woman. He said this, over and over. There was no way he could ever do anything to hurt her. It was Emilia. They needed to speak with Emilia. She knew. Josh said he needed to get some sleep before he passed out on the table right there.

“Let me go talk to [him] for a minute,” Buie said, indicating that he needed to step outside the room and speak with a colleague.

Did Buie have an idea?