Dee Dee Dunston woke at 6:30 A.M. on the morning of Saturday, November 12, 2011. She was eighteen years old and a freshman cheerleader at Texas Tech University in Lubbock in West Texas. But that morning she woke in Room 310 at the Omni Hotel in Austin, Texas. The Tech football team, cheerleaders, band, and fans had traveled the three hundred seventy-five miles from Lubbock to Austin for a game against the Texas Longhorns that day at noon. Dee Dee Dunston teemed with excitement. She had never been to Austin. She did not know that she would never leave Austin.
She would be dead in eighteen hours.
Dee Dee jumped out of bed and into the shower before her roommate woke. Cissy was a sophomore and liked to sleep late; she was a city girl from Fort Worth. Dee Dee was a country girl from Sweetwater. She had grown up on a ranch where animals and humans woke at dawn. She wore boots and jeans and cowboy hats. She rode horses and branded cows and castrated calves. She was a cowboy; anyone who called her a "cowgirl" got a punch in the nose, and she could punch. She didn't wear makeup until college. She never knew she was a pretty girl; neither did the other cowboys.
But they knew now.
She blew her short blonde hair dry then dressed in her cheerleader outfit: a red top that came just below her breasts and a short red skirt that rode just below her navel, revealing her lean torso, and black Spandex shorts underneath. White bow in her hair. She was a member of the coed squad, thirty boys and girls. The coed squad performed at football games, but they also competed in collegiate cheer tournaments. The days of cheerleaders offering bouncing breasts and fluffy pompoms were long gone; cheerleading today was physical and demanding, more gymnastics than cheerleading. Back in high school, she had played softball and volleyball and trained in gymnastics, which led her into competitive cheering. She had won a spot on the Tech squad at the tryouts the previous May. Tumbling, stunts, basket toss, game day spirit and motion techniques, and the interview. It was like winning the Miss America pageant, only harder. Her abs were ripped, her legs muscular, her arms lean. Cheerleading today was not for soft-bodied girls. It was for athletes.
Dee Dee Dunston was an athlete.
"What time is it?"
She had come out of the bathroom to find Cissy stirring.
"Seven-thirty. I'm going down for breakfast."
Sweetwater's population was ten thousand; Lubbock's was two hundred forty thousand; Austin's was a million. Dee Dee had never been to the big city. She felt as if she had spent the entire time in town gazing about in awe with her mouth gaped open. The tall buildings, the homeless people panhandling for handouts, the colorful tattooed people with piercings all over their bodies, and the cross-dressers parading about. It was like going to the circus, except this show wasn't under a big tent. It was everywhere in Austin.
And now she felt her mouth drop open again as they walked across the football field at the UT stadium. The Mustang Bowl, the Sweetwater High School stadium, seated six thousand; the Texas Tech stadium sixty thousand; the UT stadium one hundred thousand. The stands rose high into the blue sky, and there was a huge video screen in the south end zone where they would show instant replays.
"Big," Cissy said.
"Amazing," Dee Dee said.
"He is."
"I'm talking about the stadium."
"I'm talking about him."
"Who?"
Cissy nodded in the direction of the Longhorn team warming up on the field. Dee Dee looked that way.
"William Tucker."
He wore his white uniform pants but only a tight sleeveless orange shirt. His body was muscular, his long hair blonde, his smile big and bright when he looked over at them. His voice was strong and manly when he called out.
"The Dizzy Rooster on Sixth Street. Tonight. Be there."
Cissy and the other girls giggled. Dee Dee did not. She stood as if her sneakers were embedded in the grass field. Cissy tugged at her arm. Dee Dee finally moved, but not before she had made a decision.
She would be there. That night. At the Dizzy Rooster.
The Dizzy Rooster offered live music seven days a week. It was loud, it was crowded, it was filled with neon beer signs, and it was fun. The female bartenders wore red and pink tutus and corsets and stockings with garter belts, which explained all the guys at the long wooden bar, that and the two girls dancing on the bar. Dee Dee stood at the bar with Cissy and four other Tech cheerleaders. They were drinking beers. The legal drinking age in Texas was twenty-one, but like most underage college students, Dee Dee possessed two driver's licenses: the real one she gave to cops when they stopped her for speeding the highway between Sweetwater and Lubbock and the fake one she gave to bouncers at bars. The fake one showed her age as twenty-one.
She finished her beer and ordered another; she felt a hand on her arm. She whirled around ready to tell another Tech player to drop dead and came face to face with him. She stared up at his face. The face all of America had seen so many times on television. The face that had been all around campus the past week as the excitement over the big game with Texas grew each day. The face of—
William Tucker.
"She fought him," Dwayne said.
It was Monday afternoon. They had retraced Dee Dee Dunston's every step that day based upon the homicide report from two years before: Omni Hotel … UT stadium for the game … back to the hotel for dinner … partying on Sixth Street … the Dizzy Rooster bar. Frank and the others now stood at the crime scene behind the bar where Dee Dee's short life had ended.
"Detectives back then, they were pros," Dwayne said. "Tracked her minute by minute that day. To this bar. She was last seen inside the bar at approximately midnight. She came out here through the back door. Of her own volition."
"What's that mean?" Chuck asked.
"Means he didn't drag her. She came out here of her own free will. Only one reason she'd come out here with the killer. Sex. Consensual sex turned rough and then violent. It happens."
The alley behind the bar was bleak and bare; it was not a place where a young girl's life should end. Where any life should end.
"Time of death was between midnight and two A.M.," Dwayne said. "Cause of death was strangulation. Cleaning crew found her the next morning, about six. Cops collected all the evidence there was to collect, couldn't match the DNA. Put out her photos around Austin and on the Tech campus, asked for leads. None came. Became a cold case."
Dwayne squatted; he puffed on his cigar and pondered the crime scene like a Sioux hunter tracking his prey. He was a homicide cop again, a pro from the mean streets of Houston. He held out the color crime scene photos one by one, matching each up with the reality of the crime scene. Frank looked over Dwayne's shoulder at the final photo—Dee Dee Dunston in an awkward sitting position in a corner where this building met the adjoining one, as if she had slid down the brick wall, her face bloody and her blonde hair messy, her red cheerleader outfit out of kilter, her legs splayed, the bright white sneakers with the little red pompoms entwined in the laces incongruous with the rest of her body, her blue eyes wide open. Staring at her lifeless image, Frank Tucker was certain of one thing.
My son did not do this to her.
"Whoever did this to her," Dwayne said, "he was big and strong. 'Cause she didn't go down easy. She fought him, hard. She punched, she kicked … she didn't want to die."
An image flashed through Frank's mind of Dee Dee fighting for her life in this small space, trapped in this corner, slapping her fists against her attacker's thick arms while his big hands grasped her neck and strangled her. Fighting but losing. They all stared at Dee Dee's death photo. Chico made the sign of the cross.
"Can we get a drink?" Chuck said. "Seriously, I need a drink."
"I need a protein shake," William said to the guard. "So I need someone to go to my dorm and get my supplements and whey protein. And I've got to get in a real workout today. I've got a game Saturday."
The fat-ass guard pushed the food tray through the slot in the bars. From the looks of him, he hadn't even driven past a gym in two decades.
"Oh, okay. Let me call down to the fitness center, make you an appointment."
"Thanks."
The guard laughed.
"What?" William said.
"Boy, you some kind of bullshit prima donna, ain't you? This ain't no fucking spa, stud. You in that cell twenty-three hours each day. You get one hour outside on the concrete inside the fences with the electric wires up top. Ain't no working out in here. There's just working off the time."
"You know who I am? I'm William Tucker."
"And you think that makes you special?"
"Yeah. I do."
"Your mama tell you that? You a special boy? Well, let me tell you something, William Tucker—ain't no special in here."
The guard chuckled and walked off. William heard him mumbling.
" 'I want to workout,' he says. Hell, I want a fuckin' raise."
The gangbanger next door giggled.
"White people are funny."