CHAPTER TEN

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 16, 1994, 11:49 P.M.

Greco brought Dana back to the interview room. He told her that she could talk to her dad in a few minutes. They also told her that they’d spoken with Jim, who’d said that she had come into some money earlier that day.

“Yeah. When I got the cash from the, from that savings book, uh, that’s what I, that’s what my story was,” Dana said. “I didn’t want him to know.”

“What was your story?”

“That my aunt had sent me some money, that’s all.”

“OK. There’s a, there’s a lot of stuff that still points in your direction. And it’s, it’s time for you to come clean,” McElvain said.

“I’ve given you all of the information I have,” Dana said, sounding annoyed.

“No, you, you haven’t. And, and just like earlier, it’s, it’s time for you to clean the slate and start your life over again. You can’t get past this point in your life until this is done.

“All we’re asking you is complete honesty.”

Dana’s expression hardened, like a businesswoman trying to negotiate a deal. She dug in her heels.

“Well, I want a lawyer to say anything more. I’ve given you everything I can give. You know, I was scared and it was stupid for me to try to spend a credit card, it was even stupider…”

Dana kept talking, so Greco picked up the questioning. He wanted a confession, even if it wasn’t admissible in court. Let the lawyers fight it out later.

“It’s just that we don’t feel that you’ve given us everything … because of the circumstances…”

“It looks bad,” Dana said, finishing his sentence.

“Look at the circumstances, OK? Look at our position,” Greco said.

“I do look at your position. I know that’s why you’re hammering me so … But I’m tellin’ you, it’s…” she stammered, breaking down again. “All I wanted to do is get some cash and some things.”

In a way, Greco felt that they’d hit the real core. She was a long way from admitting the murders. But she probably was telling them everything about her motivations—as much as she wanted them to believe.

Greco pushed on. If she was about to break, it was now or never.

“There’s a lot of unanswered questions about victims here. It’s not just about cash. It’s not about credit cards. It’s about people’s lives that were taken.”

“Well, I don’t know,” Dana said, reaching for a tissue.

Greco saw that, for some reason, talking about her own desire to shop, to acquire material possessions, triggered Dana’s tears. But talking about the loss of human life was like a cork for her tears. She stopped crying immediately.

“It’s very important.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” Dana sounded annoyed. “I’ve told you everything I could tell you. Now that I know that it’s your job to keep asking me over and over again, but I don’t know what else to tell you. I really don’t.

“I lied,” Dana said, breaking down again. “I was scared.”

“I understand, and you may still be scared about what else is, is behind that.”

“Today,” Dana said, now so fully engulfed in tears that she had trouble speaking, is the biggest fuck-up I think I’ve ever done in my life. I don’t have any criminal history. I don’t steal.

“And I’ve been under stress. I just wanted to have something,” she said, raising both fists and bringing them down hard, “have some cash, some clothes for Jason, you know. That’s, that’s really all I really wanted.

“I can’t have kids … I tried like hell to get it to work and it’s just…” she said, pausing to sniff. “You know, I saw that wallet and I went, ‘W-O-W!’ And I lost my head … I lost my sense. You know, but you find something, you know, and you look and it’s there and you just think, well, should I do it, can I get away with it?

“Obviously I didn’t, I’m not a, I never did it, I fucked up. Don’t you understand?”

Greco later realized that this may have been the closest she’d ever get to a confession. She was telling him that she did it—without saying she did it. She was basically explaining that she killed these ladies so she could shop.

Dana had already asked for her lawyer, but they wanted to see how far she would go.

“I don’t know what to tell you … I’m lucky because it’s, it’s not, I just got lucky and it’s bad. I wish I wasn’t there to find the card … to find that purse.”

Dana was holding fast to her story. Now was the time to see if she would change her story if she thought someone saw her.

But the more they tried, the harder Dana clung to her version of events. Only after 20 minutes of painstaking questioning would Dana admit that she’d been in Sun City on the morning of the murder. But she insisted that she’d been lost and only got out of her car to smoke a cigarette.

THURSDAY, MARCH 17, 1994, 12:25 A.M.

Greco and McElvain got up to leave, saying they were going to let Russell into the room. Greco wanted to prep him for a few minutes before bringing him in. McElvain would keep an eye on Dana via the hidden camera. She shifted positions often, laid her head on the back of the seat, picked at her tissue, burped and blew her nose. Greco walked back to the report-writing room, the hours of interviews swirling around his brain. Her callousness disgusted him. He had no doubt that she’d killed Norma, June and Dora, and had attacked Dorinda in the antique store. But every time they tried to push her, she backed off. Chipping away at her lies was taking a long time. It was eerie the way she turned the tears on and off. And she seemed to cry at odd times. Greco had a feeling that her reluctant admission, that she had stopped in Sun City for a cigarette, would probably never see the inside of any court because she kept asking for a lawyer.

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…”

“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.”