Thirty-four

Jack entered the interview room seemingly quite relaxed and in an apparently cooperative mood. The general impression he projected was of someone more than willing to help the police answer any unresolved questions.

Castillo got the ball rolling.

“Before we get started,” Castillo said, “I just wanted to thank you for coming down here. I know it’s been a tough month and a half for you, we understand that. We just have a few things we needed to clear up regarding the report, and regarding some details we didn’t have before. Now, at any time, if you feel like leaving, you’re free to go, at any time.”

Jack nodded that he understood, and seated himself in a chair. Jack crossed his right ankle over his left knee and gazed calmly at Castillo.

Castillo deliberately did not give Jack a warning against self-incrimination, the Miranda warning, because Jack was not in custody.

Castillo now referred to Jack’s earlier statement of February 28, the day after Roberta died.

“Do you want to add anything to that?” Castillo asked.

“Not that I can think of,” Jack said.

Castillo asked if Jack was sure he had nothing to add, and Jack again said no.

“There’s a lot of things we don’t understand about your mother’s death,” Castillo said, “and you’re the only one who can help us out. We’ve completed the investigation into the death of your mother, and what this investigation reveals is that your mother did not die of natural causes.”

“What are you getting at?” Jack asked.

“It was the direct result of somebody harming your mother,” Castillo said. “The investigation revealed that your mother died of being asphyxiated. The investigation, what it’s telling us, on completion, is that your mother was smothered to death.”

Those watching observed Jack intently. This was the moment, if Jack was innocent, for him to grow excited and stand up and demand an explanation from Castillo: What did Castillo mean, saying Roberta was murdered? Who did it? Why?

Or, alternatively, to ask how Castillo was so sure that smothering was the cause of death. Or even, to make for the door, telling Castillo that he had nothing further to say, and to call his lawyer.

But Jack did and said nothing. He continued to gaze at Castillo, apparently unperturbed.

Castillo tried once more.

“Like I said before, the autopsy report is very, very clear, that your mother did die at the hands of another. It was not natural. And the injuries were caused by another person.”

Still Jack sat quietly. Castillo shifted gears to a more direct approach.

“Mr. Barron,” he said, “now is the time, if you had anything to do with your mother’s death, now is the time to tell us, right now.”

Jack for the first time appeared startled.

“You mean me?” he asked. He laughed.

“I’m asking you, Mr. Barron.”

“No,” Jack said.

Castillo tried again.

“Now is the time to make something good, to try to make something good, out of a terrible situation that happened to your mother,” he said.

For the first time, Jack displayed some irritation.

“What are you implying here?” he asked.

“I want to know, we’d like to know, if you had anything to do with your mother’s death,” Castillo said.

“No, I did not,” Jack said, firmly. Still Jack made no move to terminate the interview, or ask whether Castillo intended to arrest him, since Castillo seemed to believe that Jack had killed Roberta.

“Because now is the time to tell us,” Castillo added.

“I had nothing to do with my mother’s death,” Jack said.

“Okay,” said Castillo. “Mr. Barron, who could have done something like this?”

“I have no idea.”

“What’s your take on something like this?”

“I don’t know,” Jack said.

Castillo tried to start over, in an obvious attempt to elicit some sort of reaction from Jack other than a blanket denial. The idea was to get Jack to start talking, and so far, nothing was working.

“The conclusion of the investigation revealed to us that you are responsible for your mother’s death,” Castillo said. “This month-and-a-half, this extensive investigation that the Benicia Police Department has done, along with [the Solano County District Attorney’s Office], along with the Department of Justice, along with the Attorney General’s Office, all of this information and these resources that we’ve added to, in the last month and a half, in a very, very extensive investigation … revealed that you are responsible for the death of your mother.”

Castillo was now trying to impress on Jack that it wasn’t just Castillo who was of the opinion that Jack killed Roberta, but a host of other law enforcement officials as well. Sometimes this worked to make a suspect feel hopeless in continuing a denial.

But Jack wouldn’t succumb.

“No, I’m not,” he said, simply and directly.

It was as if Castillo were deaf to Jack’s denials. He tried appealing to Jack’s vanity.

“What myself and Investigator Garza want to know is how such a very bright and intelligent man like yourself could have planned this? This is the most extensive investigation we’ve ever done.”

“I didn’t do it,” Jack said again.

Again Castillo ignored Jack.

“So the only question we have, Mr. Barron, is, we know you did it. That is not the question. The question myself and Investigator Garza have is, why? How did you do it?”

Garza broke in at this point.

“We just want to understand, basically, you know, why? Why somebody like you would do something like this?”

Garza, a muscular man who favored tooled cowboy boots and a flowing mustache, and who could be intimidating, now perched himself on the edge of a desk and stared at Jack.

Jack saw that he was expected to give some sort of extended response beyond a simple “I didn’t do it.”

“I loved my mother very much,” Jack said, displaying some emotion for the first time. “She has been there for me over a lot of tragic times. I wouldn’t do that. Where do you guys get off saying that?”

Jack appeared to splutter with indignation. To those watching, it seemed somehow feigned—outrage for outrage’s sake.

“This is,” Jack said, “this is an absolute nightmare. I don’t believe this.” He sat up straighter, and glared at the two detectives.

Now everyone watching expected Jack to go for the door, to tell Garza and Castillo that the interview was over. Instead, Jack settled back in his chair and resumed his gaze at Garza.

Garza picked up Peterson’s autopsy report and flipped through its five pages.

“It says she died at the hands of another,” Garza told Jack. “We need to understand, [because] along with the rest of the investigation, [it] says it all comes back to [nobody] else but you. What we want to know is, [what] we need [is], the answers to those questions.”

“I didn’t do it,” Jack said one more time.

Garza tried a different approach.

“You have no idea who you think may have done it?” he asked.

“No,” said Jack.

“How about who do you think might have done it?”

“I know I talked with her around that time they were having some problems in her union over in Vallejo,” Jack said.

“The union?”

“Yeah,” Jack said.

“The union had nothing to do with it,” Garza said.

Jack shook his head at this information, and asked Garza if he believed that just because the union wasn’t involved, that meant it had to be Jack?

“Mr. Barron, let me explain something to you,” Castillo said. “During this investigation I got to talk with a lot of union members, okay? Your mother supported Pete Roswell, correct?”

“Right,” Jack said.

Castillo shook his head. He went through a number of names of people involved in the union dispute, and told Jack that he’d done a thorough investigation of each one.

“We found their whereabouts during the time of the death of your mother,” Castillo said. “They’ve all been alibied. And it’s not a possibility. Zero. Is there anybody else you think might have done it?”

“All right, fine,” Jack said, accepting Castillo’s assertion that no one in the union could have been involved.

“Is there anybody else you think might have done it?” Castillo asked.

“No,” Jack said.

Garza now tried to induce Jack to talk about his relations with Roberta, and asked him what he and Roberta had fought about.

“Minor stuff, you know,” Jack said.

Garza asked Jack whether Roberta had ever made Jack mad enough for him to want to kill her.

Once more Jack showed some emotion.

“Of course not,” he said. “Absolutely not.”

“Well, what were the things you fought about?” Garza asked.

Jack muttered something no one could make out. Garza prompted him again.

“After my daughter’s death, I got another good job at the railroad,” Jack said. “She wanted me to move back in. I said, ‘Well, you’ve got your own life now.’ I said, ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ She goes, ‘Yeah.’ Because at the time there was another person there. Her boyfriend.”

Jack made some reference to Tim O’Keefe, but Garza persisted in asking Jack what he and Roberta had fought about.

“Oh, minor things,” Jack said. “Like, you know, I’m 33 years old, and in her eyes, I’m probably still 13 or 14. You know, you never outgrow that stage,” Jack meaning, in the eyes of one’s mother. But it was a small thing, Jack added.

“I’d never harm my mother,” he said.

“What sort of things would you argue about?” Garza persisted.

“Just petty things,” Jack said. “You know. You know, she’d get wound up on certain things, and I, you know, brushed it off, no big deal. But my mom and I have been through a lot since the divorce from my biological father. She’s been there for me every time. I’ve been there for her on a few occasions too.

“Now, for the last three years or so, with all that’s gone on, she’s been solid. She’s been there for me. And, uh, no, I wouldn’t ever, ever do something like that to my mother.”

Garza switched approaches again, inviting Jack to say, if all this was true, that Roberta and he were so close, how Jack could possibly have killed her.

“I didn’t do it,” Jack said, one more time.