CHAPTER EIGHT

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 16, 1994, 9:15 P.M.

He was wondering when the killer was going to hit their side of town. Detective Chris Antoniadas, stocky but nimble enough to step lightly through the crime scene, had been expecting someone to get whacked in his part of town. If this killer was targeting the elderly, Sun City was an obvious choice. It was one of several cities built around the country just for retirees. Just as Canyon Lake was built around a man-made lake, the homes in Sun City were literally built around a golf course. But unlike Canyon Lake, there were no walls, no guards to check visitors and no on-site police sub-station. Most of the homes had no-maintenance lawns of decorative rock and all of the homes were one-story to allow ease of mobility among residents using canes, walkers and wheelchairs. The community service center offered shuffleboard, lawn bowling and card groups as well as an array of service clubs. It was a well-stocked pond for a killer targeting the elderly.

Antoniadas had been a cop for fifteen years, the last nine as a homicide investigator for the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department. His curly dark hair flecked with gray, he was 100 percent Greek and proud of it, speaking nothing but Greek until he was 5 years old, when his parents sent him off to school. He’d lost his accent a long time ago, but he loved good, authentic Greek food and still celebrated Easter the old-fashioned way—by slaughtering a lamb and cooking it in the backyard on a spit. The neighbors had called the cops on him once because they thought he was cooking someone’s dog.

He had been a street kid, had run with a tough crowd and got into a lot of trouble before joining the Marines. They straightened him out in a hurry. When he got out, a friend encouraged him to join him in law enforcement, so he applied and got a job. At about the same time, one of his friends asked to borrow $5,000 to start a copy business and Antoniadas agreed. Then he begged Antoniadas to be his business partner, but Antoniadas argued with him. How the hell are you gonna make any money turning out three-cent copies? His friend found other partners and they started Kinko’s. Antoniadas still goes to visit his buddy at his million-dollar penthouse office overlooking the ocean. He teases Antoniadas: “How the hell am I gonna make money turning out three-cent copies?” But Antoniadas doesn’t regret his choice of staying with police work.

From 1988 on, he worked out of the Lake Elsinore station, which had jurisdiction over roughly 1,000 square miles, including unincorporated county areas and cities like Sun City that didn’t have their own police departments. The region was sparsely populated, but it led the county in violent homicides. There were murders, and then there were ugly murders. Biker gangs cutting people’s fingers off before killing them. A mental case stabbing his mother so many times, he ended up hacking her head off. For some reason, dirt bags came to Lake Elsinore to kill people. He thought it was partly that and partly the meth.

The things he’d seen had changed him. The last thing that had shocked him was seeing his partner shot to death. He was assigned to investigate the case. When he went to the autopsy and saw his partner laid out on the metal gurney with the holes cut into it and a tray underneath to catch the spillover, he joked, “I always wondered what he looked like from the inside out.” Black humor relieves stress. What was he supposed to do, sit there and blubber?

He was the kind who worked a case until he ran himself into the ground. Most of the time, he just worked, all day, all night, for days on end, barely coming home to sleep. His wife didn’t like it, but that was her problem. The effect it had on his health was an annoyance. At 42, he was too young for his heart to be giving him problems. He was out on a surveillance for his undercover unit one time with his partner, waiting for a guy to come out of a bar. They knew the suspect carried a sawed-off shotgun in his car. When the guy came out, Antoniadas stepped on the gas and at the same time, a local reporter and his photographer, also in a car, had found out where Antoniadas was and inadvertently blocked his way. Alerted to the trap, the suspect got his gun and started shooting. Antoniadas’ partner got shot, Antoniadas had to shoot and wound the suspect. As it turns out, they all got a ride to the hospital. Antoniadas hadn’t been shot, but the strain on his heart caused him to go into tachycardia—his heart was beating 200 times a minute and got stuck there. The doctor told him to slow down. Antoniadas didn’t know how.

Antoniadas had investigated more than 100 homicides and this scene was one of the worst. Looking around Dora’s house, Antoniadas saw the obvious signs of age: the walker, the cane and the calendar marked up with doctors’ appointments. On the first walk-through, he assumed the victim was old because every single person who lived in that area was aged—and she was the companion of Louis Dormand, the elderly gentleman friend who discovered her body. It wasn’t until after they found her ID that they checked her date of birth. Dora was 87.

There had been very few murders in Sun City; Antoniadas found that the suspects in the cases he investigated around there were sons, grandsons, nephews or other relatives killing their parents or grandparents for an inheritance. Sometimes the victim was a resident who surprised a burglar. Antoniadas took one look at Dora’s mutilated corpse and knew this one was different.

In the first place, most murderers, particularly those who kill for profit, during a burglary, or to settle a gang score, just kill and get out. They don’t sit there and endlessly bludgeon the victim. On the walk-through of Dora’s house, he saw the results of a prolonged heating that went far beyond what was needed to kill a victim of this age. One blow would have done it. This was a definite overkill with the severe beating and obvious signs of ligature strangulation. He was past feeling horror at seeing the victim’s face battered beyond recognition, her hands still raised to ward off her attacker. It wasn’t his job to feel. His job was to catch who did this and to calm down the people who were frightened of becoming the next victim. As he walked through, he considered the possibilities, trying to determine the sequence of the attack as well as the killer’s motives. Though law enforcement doesn’t have to prove a defendant’s motive in court, it’s usually helpful in identifying a suspect. Antoniadas saw a lot of rage in the way that Dora had been brutalized. Given the extent of the beating, one possibility was that the killer was venting anger on the old woman personally. Since there was no sign of a forced entry, it was possible that Dora knew her attacker. But the killer could also have conned his way in. If he did, he didn’t attack her at the front door, because there was no indication of a struggle in the entryway or the living room. It also didn’t look like Dora had surprised a burglar who had gained access to her home, because nothing was ransacked. Antoniadas didn’t think this killer was there for monetary gain. Very little effort had been spent searching for valuables and far too much time had been devoted to brutalizing the victim. He could have dispatched her with one blow. This guy could be mentally disturbed like the guy who stabbed his mother. Or he could just be extremely violent. Maybe he had a fetish against old people. He knew it wasn’t Louis Dormand. The old guy didn’t have the strength to do this. Whoever it was, was definitely out of control.

When Antoniadas first arrived at the murder scene, he had dictated his observations into a tape recorder, documenting everything, starting with the weather and temperature, the open garage door, whether the day’s newspaper had been picked up or not and which doors and windows were open, closed, locked or unlocked. Dormand said the front door was closed, but not locked. There were no broken windows, no scratch or tool marks that would indicate a forced entry.

After a hundred homicide investigations, he had no idea whether the time of death would emerge as the primary issue of the case. He had no idea how long that woman had been dead. He had no idea whether they would ever find a suspect or what was going to be important years from now at trial. The outside temperature, the temperature inside the house, open doors and windows and the setting of the thermostat could be important if the coronor had to estimate the range of time in which the murder occurred. It was impossible to pinpoint the exact time of death. But if the homicide investigator records the ambient indoor and outdoor temperature at the crime scene, as well as details like thermostat settings, a deputy medical examiner can plug those figures into a formula that calculates the amount of time it would take a body to cool, providing a span of several hours during which the murder most likely occurred. It isn’t an exact science. But Antoniadas had seen clever defense attorneys at murder trials insinuate that detectives were sloppy if they missed a piece of evidence at a crime scene, and he’d seen them make points before a jury over evidence that wasn’t important.

He once found himself on the witness stand at trial of one of his homicide defendants who was accused of bludgeoning his wife with a hard object. In his opening statement to jurors, the defense attorney had woven a tale of a sloppy police investigation and shoddy detective work. At the crime scene, years earlier, Antoniadas had dutifully documented, photographed and collected all of the objects that could have been used to strike the fatal blow, like fireplace tools, a hammer and a heavy candlestick. But under cross-examination, the defense attorney produced a crime-scene photo showing a large baseball bat that Antoniadas had never collected and hadn’t mentioned in his police report. Antoniadas calmly acknowledged that he, indeed, never mentioned the big bat. Turning to jurors and waving the photograph in front of them, the lawyer finally asked why he never picked up the bat. Antoniadas testified that it was a plastic toy bat. The bat contained numerous holes in it to play Wiffle Ball and was designed to prevent injury if a child was accidentally struck with it. The bat could not possibly have been used to murder the victim. After the jury stopped laughing, the defense attorney slinked back to the counsel table. His client was convicted. Antoniadas would have told the lawyer about the bat before he got on the witness stand, but he never asked, and Antoniadas didn’t volunteer it because he didn’t know the lawyer was going to make some insignificant detail the centerpiece of his case. Antoniadas had no patience for that. He was not about to be shot down in front of a jury. That was why it would take 15 to 18 hours to process this crime scene.

He had another problem. The old folks were coming out of their homes to gawk and ask questions. Not only were they frightened, they were angry. They were former accountants, lawyers and business owners who, by the time they retired, had had multiple employees answering to them. They’d reached a point in their lives where they wanted to live out their years in comfort and safety. It was not acceptable that a murderer was stalking their neighborhood. There was nowhere they could go to escape, unless they left the homes they had worked for all their lives. These were the people who voted in every election, read the newspaper and had the time to phone the gas company when there was a problem with their bill. Now they wanted to know what the hell was going on. He’d talked to a handful of them when he arrived, but he was in no position to tell them anything of substance. The best he could do was to say yes, there’d been a homicide, they were working on it, and then try to reassure them that the police would do everything to catch the killer, and as soon as they knew anything, they’d let the neighbors know, but at this point, there was no reason to be concerned about safety. It was b.s., of course. Hell, they had a Freddie Krueger character on the loose. They had every reason to be afraid. But he couldn’t tell them that.

As the evening wore on, the number of onlookers seemed to increase as more and more people found out about the murder and showed up at Dora’s house. There must have been about 40 of them altogether, arriving a handful at a time. Antoniadas remained in the house most of the night, but the deputies keeping watch outside let him know.

By this time of night, the ID tech had placed numbered yellow placards by each piece of evidence. Antoniadas and the tech had started from the outside and searched around the side and backyards for anything of evidentiary value, like a shoe or some foot imprints on the lawn or the driveway, snapped or broken twigs, or marks in the dirt under the windows showing that someone had been outside looking in. Anything at all that simply looked disturbed or out of place. They found nothing.

Antoniadas found the home clean and orderly. From the front door, the living room was directly ahead and the kitchen was to the left. The living room was a mix of colorful but tasteful furniture. There was a floral sofa with soft blue stripes, a light blue velour recliner and a matching ottoman, an Oriental rug, a 1970s lamp and a few antiques. Framed portrait-style family photos of a man, a woman, a child and a teenager hung on the wall. The kitchen held a few clues—there was a half-eaten sandwich on the kitchen table and a half-glass of orange juice next to the sink. On the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room lay a daily calendar with the page exposed to March 16, a few clipped coupons, a church newsletter, a grocery list and a pair of bifocal glasses. A GTE phone book was open and lying face-down on the kitchen floor in front of the sink. A cane hung from the doorknob of the kitchen pantry. On one kitchen wall were more family snapshots—a baby in a red corduroy jumper, a school photo of a young boy, and a picture of Louis Dormand. There was an empty phone jack on the wall, but no phone.

From the kitchen, a hallway led to the bathroom and the master bedroom. Dora was lying on her right side, curled against the bathroom door jamb. Her legs protruded from the bathroom and into the hall, where they rested beneath a dozen family photos. Her left hand was raised against her face, and her fingers—stiff from rigor mortis—were outstretched, frozen in an unsuccessful attempt to ward off the attacker. Her hands, fingers and forearms bore multiple bruises and cuts; blood was caked under her fingernails. She was wearing gray stretch slacks and a light pink shirt. Blood had soaked through the soft gold carpet in the hallway, had splittered low on the walls, had pooled on a purple towel in the bathroom, and had matted the area around Dora’s head. So savage was the attack that hanks of gray hair lay on the carpet. Dora’s pearl clip-on earrings and her glasses, worn around her neck with a beaded neckchain, had been ripped off during the struggle and had landed on the carpet near her feet. Yellow placards, like dozens of small easels, littered the floor, numbering the beige princess phone and the cord, tied in a slip knot, that lay under her bent left leg, the jewelry, her glasses, the hair and numerous bloodstains.

A gruesome trail of blood splatters and smears and overturned furniture in the master bedroom told Antoniadas where the attack had begun. He thought Dora was assaulted in the bedroom, where a little blue lamp had been knocked off a white-and-gold–trimmed dresser and a metal chair had been overturned. A pencil-holder on the desk was also upended. The attacker probably surprised Dora from behind, strangling her. After that, the struggle moved into the hallway where blood splatters reached hip level along the walls. Dora must have been doubled over when she was struck in the back of the head with the iron. Years ago, when Antoniadas was a young cop on patrol, he had to use his baton to strike a suspect on the shoulder, but when the man turned to run away, Antoniadas struck him squarely on the head, causing blood to spray everywhere. He knew head injuries caused spatters.

Later, when he started investigating homicides, he got many first-hand looks at the forceful spray and the profuse gushing that comes from a hard blow to the head. Just like clusters of stars suggest to an astronomer the origin and velocity of celestial bodies, the constellation of bloodstains dotting Dora’s white walls chronicled the order and direction of the attack. Coming up with precise data about space from millions of miles away is about as difficult as looking at a crime scene and deducing an exact order of events that accounts for every injury, every piece of evidence, each blood drop, smear and spatter. Murder scenes have puzzling pieces that don’t seem to fit because the action that occurs during a frenzied attack rarely makes much sense. Nevertheless, detectives pride themselves on the hypotheses they form about how murders occurred. While their deductions may never make it to court, they can help them track the killer.

The first set of splatter marks was on the wall just outside Dora’s bedroom, slanting slightly downward from left to right. The second set was to the right, covered the door to the linen closet, and slanted at a similar angle. There was much more blood and it covered a larger surface area than the first set of dots. At its lowest point, the dots were much closer to the floor, indicating that after the first blow, when Dora was crouched over, the second blow was delivered while she lay even closer to the floor. The third set of splatter marks on a second door in the hallway showed that the struggle continued to the right. It was about the same level as the second set. The largest bloody carpet stain, at about the center of the hallway, showed where Dora probably collapsed to the floor, bleeding from multiple blows.

From there, the assault moved toward the bathroom. Judging from her body position, it looked as if she had tried to crawl into the bathroom, but she could have been dragged there with the phone cord around her neck. A fourth set of blood splatters had sprayed on the hallway wall just outside the bathroom, indicating that she was on the ground by this time. Those marks were congruent with another large carpet stain. Dora had either continued crawling away, or she’d been rolled over. Next to the open bathroom door, directly across from where she lay, the imprint of her blood-matted hair smeared against the door at floor-level. Next to it was a towel so soaked with blood that one could barely see its original purple color. Dora had come to a rest directly against the bathroom doorway. Bloody smears on the wall inside the bathroom, close to the floor, showed that something had rubbed against the wall. By that point in the attack, Antoniadas thought Dora had to have been either unconscious or dead. The smears could have been made by the killer, whose clothing who would have had a fair amount of blood on it. Dora was left with both eyes blackened and her scalp literally split open. Antoniadas thought that the killer dragged Dora, with the phone cord around her neck, into the bathroom to beat her. It probably didn’t take long. Less than a minute. The killer was probably in and out of the house in 10 minutes.

The small bathroom was outfitted with matching light pink chenille for the toilet, rug, and bath mat. Small, pink guest soaps were arranged by the tub. Blood spots lightly dotted the wall, toilet, counter and rug, probably flung when the killer was cleaning up. The yellow numbered tags marking the blood dots were hanging from the wall and the toilet tank; they were propped up on the counter for the photographer. Next to an array of lotions and hand soaps which Dora had put in flowered containers next to the sink, lay the Black & Decker iron, black on top, and shiny, bright chrome on the bottom. It had been neatly deposited in the sink and a bloody flowered towel was hanging from the faucet. Resting next to the iron was a clear bar of golden-hued soap. The hand towel was twisted, wrung out, and plopped over the cold water faucet handle. When an ID tech removed the iron to allow the photographer to take a picture, Antoniadas saw that the left side was dented.

The master bedroom held clues about what happened after the murder. Wallpaper, white with an airy pattern of blue flowers, matched the bedding. Dora’s nightstand was largely bare save for a small flashlight, a phone, a clock radio, a tissue box, and three containers of cold remedies. A bulletin board on the wall next to her bed held a big map of Indiana adorned with family photos. Dora’s large black purse was unzipped and sitting on her bed, its wallet missing. A desk drawer containing financial statements from Provident Bank had been pulled open. It was the only open drawer. A large black jewelry box on top of a dresser was undisturbed. There were just three small blood dots on the dresser, next to Dora’s walker and an old-fashioned hair salon–style bonnet hair dryer. Another tiny blood dot was on a white jacket hanging from the door. More blood dotted the carpet in front of the closet door. Antoniadas thought these drops were, in police parlance, cast-off, meaning that those spots were inadvertently flung from the killer’s hands or clothing during the search for valuables after the murder.

As Antoniadas walked through the crime scene with the ID techs, putting together the scene in his mind, he continued stumbling upon details. An ironing board was set up in a second bedroom. The door to that bedroom was shut when the police got there and was one of the areas sprayed with blood in the hallway. Did the killer see the iron in the bedroom and then neatly shut the door before attacking Dora? The iron also could have been stored in the hall closet, which meant that the killer had shut the linen closet door before attacking Dora. But that left the question of why the killer, needing a viable murder weapon in a hurry, would choose to rummage through a linen closet.

The other odd detail was the phone cord. Not only was it still attached to the phone, it had been removed from the victim’s neck. If the phone cord had been ripped from the wall, why hadn’t the killer unplugged the receiver instead of strangling the victim while it dangled from her neck? Antoniadas thought the cord could have slipped off the victim while the killer used it to drag Dora to the bathroom. There was no sense in driving himself crazy. He’d seen too many crime scenes, too many blood smears he couldn’t explain. Murder defied logic.

“The sheriff’s here to see you.”

The deputy surprised him. Antoniadas turned around.

“The sheriff?”

“Yes. The sheriff,” the deputy said, referring to Sheriff Cois Byrd, the elected sheriff of Riverside County. He rarely came out to crime scenes unless one of his deputies was shot. Antoniadas knew the sheriff was here because he was expecting a lot of publicity. The press would be all over the place in the morning and, with the additional publicity, the community would be in an uproar. Byrd wanted to know what was going on. None of this worried Antoniadas. He was just the detective. Byrd was the politician.

“I’ll be right out,” Antoniadas said.

It was 9:41 p.m. Antoniadas stepped outside the house and ducked under the yellow crime-scene tape to greet the sheriff, who was wearing a business suit. He was alone. No entourage—no press people, no secretary, no assistants.

Antoniadas briefed him so that he would be informed enough about the case to talk to the media. This was the third killing of an elderly person in a month. Counting last Thursday’s assault on Dorinda Hawkins, it was the fourth attack.

Byrd asked if Antoniadas needed anything and told him what he already knew—they wanted to see this case solved and he had the resources of the department at his disposal for the asking.

A moment passed. Antoniadas asked the sheriff if he wanted to make a walk-through of the crime scene.

Byrd was an elected official, more comfortable making small talk at a political dinner than he was processing a crime scene, but at heart, he was still a cop. Byrd asked, “Is that a good idea?”

“No,” Antoniadas said, breathing a sigh of relief. He didn’t like lookey-loos anyway.

Antoniadas went back to work and Byrd stuck around for about an hour. After he left, the sheriff had hamburgers and coffee delivered to the crime scene.

*   *   *

When Greco got back to the interview room, Bentley was still questioning Dana about the bankbook. Greco used a yellow, lined legal pad to write a note to James.

Dora Beebe was killed in Sun City today, he wrote. James was careful to register no visible response. He scribbled a quick note back to Greco.

“And you see, uh, a checkbook, and you go, ‘What the hell, I might as well cash it,’ right? How much did you cash it for?”

“I went to the bank for $2,000,” Dana said.

“Where is the $2,000?”

“At home. I can get it back. I haven’t spent any of it.”

“Well, well, that’s nice. So, you go in there and you write a check, you, you just show them her I.D. then?”

“No, I didn’t,” Dana said. “I didn’t have her I.D. I just had the bankbook … I asked her for a savings withdrawal form and I signed it and that was it. They did not ask me for any I.D.”

“And what was the lady’s name?”

“Beebe. Beebe.”

“Beebe what?”

“Dora Beebe, or something like that.”

“How do you, how do you spell Beebe?” Bentley asked, also registering no response.

“B-E-B-E,” Dana said.

“OK. What time was that?”

“Let’s see. I don’t know. I don’t know, I can’t say. About an hour or so after I … I had her purse when I thought about it, you know, ‘What should I do?’ and…”

“Did she…” Bentley began.

“I saw the bankbook and I was tempted,” Dana said.

“But you knew it was wrong,” Bentley said.

“Yes, I knew it was wrong, but I was tempted by that bankbook,” Dana said.

“OK.”

“But I did not take or spend anything of her credit cards or nothing.”

“Now where, now where are all the credit cards and everything?” Greco asked.

“Well, I took the ones I thought,” Dana gave a little laugh and a sigh, “I would try and use, and I put ’em in my house. But I didn’t use any of them. I just put ’em away.”

“OK. Where are they in your house?”

“They’re in my sock drawer,” Dana said.

“OK,” Bentley said. “This person, you didn’t happen to know her?”

“Uh-uh,” Dana said. “Never seen her before.”

Greco shot a sideways glance at McElvain. Dana had just slipped. If she’d just found a bankbook lying around a supermarket parking lot, then she never would have seen the person from whom it was stolen. It was a very incriminating statement. They were sure that Bentley caught it, too, but no one wanted to challenge her yet. They just wanted to keep her talking.

McElvain switched subjects. They knew she’d killed someone today. Today. A few hours before, she was killing Dora Beebe. She had to be feeling some stress. He wanted to push her a little and at least get her to admit using June’s credit cards. One of the tactics he and Greco had discussed involved creating a scenario in which Dana would be comfortable admitting that she had used the cards, like saying she was financially strapped or saying that everyone makes mistakes. Suggesting a few excuses can make a suspect comfortable admitting some small steps. Then they could build on those steps and, hopefully, keep pushing the suspect into admitting her entire role in a crime.

“Earlier, you know,” he said slowly, “you were stating things that are contrary to the evidence that we have.”

“Yes,” Dana said. “I think so.”

“And it’s not a ‘maybe’ mistake. It’s not, well, maybe someone looks like me,” he said. “It’s definitely you. It’s, uh, a lot of us get into positions where we make mistakes, we do things, because of financial difficulties. And that’s…”

“I admit I’ve been very, very stressed,” Dana said.

“OK. And, and I can understand that,” McElvain said. “We’ve all been in those positions where we get…”

“When I saw that bankbook,” Dana said, interrupting, “I just thought, ‘Yea!’ ‘Yippee!’”

That’s sick, Greco thought. She knows full well that she just killed this lady and she’s acting like she hit the lottery. That was worse than just lacking remorse. It was as if she were celebrating the murder.

“I, I understand, I understand,” McElvain said. “Hear me out here. We’ve all seen financial situations. I don’t know what I would do if I got my back up against the wall. And I’m sure Joe here doesn’t know what he would do. We both have families, we have kids, we understand those financial difficulties. But, but if you flat-out deny doing this, it’s, it’s hard for me to understand.

“We’ve all made mistakes and that is understandable,” he told her. “But for you to flat-out and deny you’re lying to my face … it’s hard for us to understand and try to work with you.”

They waited. Dana looked down and sniffed into a tissue. Greco thought he’d keep up the momentum.

“I mean, I understand the position, too, for being depressed and, and, that you, you know, you just recently went through a divorce,” Greco said.

“It’s much more than that,” Dana said.

“OK. Maybe you can explain to us, what happened with these, these other incidents?” Greco asked.

“I don’t know. What incidents are you talking about?” Dana said, staring back at them. She was crying, but at the same time, her face hardened. She wasn’t giving an inch. Bentley decided to confront her.

“Well, let’s, let’s go back and start with, uh, this is what’s happening, OK? We have a police officer who 100 percent saw you at Provident Bank,” Bentley said.

“OK,” Dana said.

“OK,” Bentley said.

“I mean, they may have saw me, but I did admit that I took the book,” Dana said.

“OK,” Bentley said. “OK. Now these other things sound real similar.”

“But those are the credit cards,” Dana said.

“Well, they’re very similar,” Bentley said. “The people are obviously not police officers, but they’re positive, OK?”

“I’ve been, I’ve been in those places,” Dana said.

“But they’re positive that you’re the one,” Bentley said. “And I’ll tell you what else we’re going to do. He’s gonna take that handwriting, he’s gonna compare it…”

“Go ahead, I know that’s why you have to do that,” Dana said.

“Let me put it this way,” McElvain said. “Purchases that were made at various locations are items that you have at your house. The exact items. We went and checked the, the codes, on the receipts, pulled the items from the shelf … the name brand, the style, the color. You have the exact same items in your house.

“It’s, it’s now beyond coincidental. Way beyond coincidental. And for you to continue to deny, it’s like we don’t have a relationship here.…

“I mean, you had these financial difficulties, you’ve been under a lot of stress, is it just that this came over you and it was an opportunity? That’s understandable. But for you to deny and lie, that’s not understandable,” he said.

Dana, crying again, paused.

“There are a lot of things in there that are not me,” she said.

“Well,” McElvain said. “I know right now it’s hard for you to just come out and say that you have done something…”

“I did wrong things in my life before,” Dana said.

“And remember back to those things. Doesn’t it feel like a, a weight’s been lifted off your shoulders?” McElvain asked.

“Yes, about the bankbook, yes,” Dana said, pausing again.

“Well, OK. I want to get back to this,” Bentley said. “Is there some way you could have her credit card, that she let you use it, that something happened to her and you just took the cards? Is there something that could have happened that you’re not telling us? That you visited her that day or…”

“I’ve visited her off and on because I told you, you know, she teaches me about vitamins and cooking…” Dana interrupted.

“OK, did you visit her in February, the beginning of February?”

“Somewhere in February. I don’t remember the date. It was…”

“Your prints will be in her house, obviously,” Bentley said.

“Yes, my prints would be there…” Dana said cautiously.

“Now, prints don’t last a long time,” Bentley said.

“Um-hum,” Dana said. “I saw her, um, shortly before the, that ac—ac—.”

“It wasn’t an accident,” Bentley said.

“Yeah, I was just gonna say the right words.”

“Did you ever argue with her?”

“Never.”

“Did you ever try to borrow money from her?”

“Never.”

While Bentley was taking this line of questioning, James McElvain quietly excused himself and left the room. He wanted to call Wyatt and tell him to look in Dana’s sock drawer for property belonging to Dora Beebe.

“OK. Prints don’t last a long time, so how close to the time that she was murdered were those prints there?” Bentley asked.

“I visited her within a day or two.”

“So you think you were there the day or two before?”

“It could have been. Yeah. Well, it coulda, ’cause I know the next week I heard about it, but it was days after so I wasn’t sure when the day it happened,” Dana said.

“When you saw her, how was she doing?”

“Fine. Just, she’s just, she’s just gotten a little kind of reclus-ish, you know.”

“She grumpy?” Bentley asked. Greco hated seeing Dana portray June in a poor light. But it revealed what she was thinking.

“No, not grumpy, just kind of not as the way she used to be when her husband was alive. You know, just trying to keep busy.”

“Know why you were there that day?”

“To talk to her about vitamins because I have been trying to stop drinking and I wanted to know what kind of vitamins, like B vitamins, or what kind of things that I should take to help me,” Dana said.

“Then that would explain why your prints were there?”

“Were they there?”

“I think so,” Bentley said.

“Well, then, that would explain it.”

Another pause. Greco picked up from there.

“There’s no way by accident that you came across June’s credit card. Not if you … not like you did the purse,” Greco said.

“You know that I’m very scared,” Dana said.

“I understand that. I do understand that and I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna pressure you or force you, OK? But … it’s like a weight that’s lifted off your chest. And I understand that you felt at least somewhat better about telling us about the purse, right?”

“Yeah … I was at my bank and I saw a man throw a little coin purse thing in the trash where the, by the Ready Teller. And I looked in it, but I didn’t think those were, it was her,” Dana said.

“OK.” She was lying again. Her story now was that she had found discarded credit cards belonging to one woman, and a bankbook, belonging to another, both within an hour of their owners’ separate murders. Just keep talking, Dana, Greco said to himself. Just keep talking.

“I had no idea. And, uh, I took a Mervyn’s card and a VISA and that was it. I threw the rest in the trash.”

“So you did make those purchases?”

“I made some of the purchases, but not everything you have listed.”

“OK, what did this guy look like?”

“Medium build. Uh, kind of sandy, blonde hair with a kind of, the kind, like a construction worker, kind of grubby, kind of low-life–looking guy,” Dana said. “Faded T-shirt and jeans and stuff.”

Dana had finally admitted using June’s credit cards. They got as far as Mervyn’s and the Nike Factory Outlet before they got hung up on Murrieta Hot Springs. First she denied using the card for a massage. Then she admitted that she went and used the pool with her own pool card but insisted that she’d paid cash for it. The next story was that Jason’s half-sister, a 10-year-old, had taken June’s card out of Dana’s purse before Dana disposed of it.

“You know, sometimes this little girl comes in the house, we let her…’cause she’s Jason’s uh, half-sister, and she, I forbade her to come anymore, because she steals stuff from Jason,” Dana said.

“Who is she?” Bentley asked.

“The little 9-, um, 10-year-old, uh, I’m sorry, I’m so freaked out. Taby. And she’s stolen stuff and she was around then. So I used the pool one day, but I didn’t get a massage.”

“Can you explain why we have a carbon copy of a VISA purchase?” James asked.

“Who knows? With this little girl, I don’t know,” Dana said.

“How old is she?” Greco asked.

“She’s 10 and she’s slick,” Dana said.

James McElvain had returned from talking to Wyatt. He’d been on the phone when a deputy walked over to the sock drawer. Sure enough, there were ID cards and an auto club card of Dora’s in Dana’s drawer.

“Now that’s you, you, you’re going off the wrong way again,” James said. “It’s, it’s not the little girl. It’s you.… What you keep doing here, you keep pointing here and pointing there and you’re still not being totally honest with us … So far, you’re giving us bits and pieces of that. We want the total truth.”

“Well, I’m scared,” Dana said, starting to cry again. She finally admitted using the credit card there for a massage.

“Why were you hiding that?” Bentley said. “That’s like, stupid!”

“Well, I’m scared,” Dana said again. Way to go, Bentley, Greco thought. How can you build trust like that? He couldn’t believe the prosecuting attorney, who was supposed to help establish a rapport with the serial killer, had just called her stupid. He wanted to be alone with Dana, but it was too late now. He winced as Bentley continued.

“OK, Dana,” Bentley said, “but you knew we had proof.”

“I was just scared and I’ve never done this before and I’m just scared,” she said, starting to cry again. When she calmed down, they went through the list of stores—West Dallas, Baily’s Wine Country Café, the Esthetiques, Sav-On drug store, Perfumania, Famous Brands, the housewares store, Ferrari Bistro. They got hung up on the diamond earrings. Dana admitted going to the Jewelry Mart, but insisted she bought the earrings with a check. They let it go.

“OK, here’s what I want to ask you then,” Bentley said. “’Cause here’s what’s really weird to me, OK? We know when June was killed.”

“Um-hum,” Dana said.

“And that darn credit card was used within an hour at Mervyn’s. OK? Now I submit this…”

“Well, I can’t say…” Dana interrupted.

But Bentley interrupted again. “Let me finish, let me finish. And I’m gonna tell you who I am. I’m a Deputy District Attorney, homicide. OK? And they asked me to come out here and I’ve probably been out to 150 murder scenes. And I’ve never seen a woman kill somebody like that. Men I’ve seen happen. OK? And then I’m sitting there looking at the timing that you finally, you finally came forward so close in timing. That timing is so close, OK, so close in time, plus you know the person, makes me think if you didn’t do it, you were there and knew who did it.”

“No, I did not.”

“OK, that’s what it makes me think.”

“Uh-uh,” Dana said.

“OK, now, then explain to me why I’m wrong,” Bentley said.

“Because I went to the bank, saw the guy throw those in there, took the cards and went shopping,” Dana said.

“Dana,” Greco said. “Dana, the only other, the only other, I guess really odd or unusual coincidence is that this person, this Beebe person that you used to cash her check. Do you realize that she was murdered today?”

“No,” Dana said. “No.”

“She was murdered pretty much the same way June was murdered,” James said.

“No, I don’t know anything about that,” Dana said.

“How do you explain this coincidence?” McElvain said. “Two homicides. And you find a credit card from June and then the next thing you know, a couple of weeks later, another homicide and again, you find this person’s purse.”

“I don’t have an explanation.”

“Are you, are you extremely lucky?” James asked.

“I think it was purely coincidental. ’Cause there’s no way…”

“OK, OK, let me ask you this,” Bentley interrupted. “You knew June 100 percent, right?”

“Yeah.”

“This person that you cashed the check on, you’re 100 percent sure you did not know her?”

“I’m 100 percent sure,” Dana said.

“Did you happen to see her driver’s license in there, in her purse?”

“It was mixed in with the other stuff,” Dana said.

“And what did she look like?”

Dana laughed. “Like an old lady,” she said with a soft laugh. “I didn’t look at it very closely.”

That made Greco’s skin crawl. She just killed this woman today. Now she’s laughing about her looks. He wondered if she had something against old people.

“Do you realize that your opportunity is very suspicious? Your opportunity lies around two elderly females that were murdered,” McElvain said.

“If that’s what you say, yes,” Dana said. “I mean that’s from what you said, yes.”

“It’s such a coincidence,” Greco said.

“I know, but I’m telling you, I didn’t do anything but make some purchases.”

“But you, you would have to know something. You would have to know something!” Greco said, raising his voice.

“I don’t know! Well, like what?”

“A person. Somebody you suspect.”

“Ah, the only…” Dana said, sighing. “I don’t know. There’s bad elements at Rhonda’s house, but that’s really the only…”

“That’s the, see, that’s the only problem with this whole case scenario, is that everything centers back to you,” Greco said. “See what I’m saying? Uh, as far as purchases and everything else that happened, my, my intention in this, in this investigation was to get to the bottom of this, to get to the truth.”

“Well, I’ve given you, I’ve, I finally broke down and I gave you the truth now.”

“Well … is there any reason why your prints would be in Beebe’s house?” Greco asked.

“No.”

“Would you, would you think that, uh…”

“I don’t think they’re gonna find anything,” Dana said flatly.

“Would you, would you think Jim would do something like this?” Greco asked.

“Absolutely not,” Dana said.

“If you’re responsible for this, I don’t wanna see the pendulum swinging the other way pointing towards Jim,” Bentley said.

“He doesn’t have any idea,” Dana said.

Greco thought that was probably the most truthful statement she’d made to them all night.

“Jim’s gonna be sitting in this same chair you’re sitting in, answering probably the same questions,” Greco said.

“Tonight?” Dana said, looking alarmed.

“Yes,” Greco said.

“I told him when I got the, um, when I got the card from the trash, that my husband had gotten a card in the mail. And, um, that’s when I told him,” Dana said.

“Now this is your husband’s card?” Greco asked.

“I never got a card for my husband, I just needed to explain, I really wanted to, you know, get some things for Jim. He’s been taking care of me an awful lot and that’s it, really, that’s all.”

“And this is, this is the most important part. Is that if you’re involved in this and for some reason, and there’s gotta be a reason, if there was some reason that, that made you do any of these things, that reason would be very important,” Greco said.

“My reason for…?” Dana asked.

“Well,” Greco said. “I’m not talking about the card purchases.”

“Oh.”

“I’m referring to, specifically now, I’m referring to the deaths.”

“I don’t, I can’t do that.”

“You never get so desperate that…”

“No,” Dana said. “I wouldn’t…”

“Not even for money?” Bentley asked.

“No, no. I’ve been working my ass off trying to get jobs and stuff, even menial shit, you know, and I’ve been frustrated with that and that’s why, you know, I saw that bankbook and I went, ‘Yippee!’ But, uh, no, I couldn’t kill,” Dana said, putting her hand to her nose and taking it away again. “But the person, if I was going to kill anybody, I would have killed my husband. I would never, he’s the only one that I was so mad at that I could, I could think about something that drastic. But no, I wouldn’t kill.” The hand came to the nose again and stayed. “I’m used to taking care of people, not killing them.”

Greco wanted to use her rather odd admission about wanting to kill her husband as a springboard. Could she think of any reason why they now considered her a suspect?

“No. My unemployment got denied and that’s why I was so desperate with the shopping.… I’m still on appeal for that, but,” she said with a sigh, referring to being dismissed from her nursing job, “I’m not a killer. I am not a killer.” The hand came up to the nose again.

“Do you know who is?” Greco asked.

“No, I don’t. I do not know,” Dana said, changing the subject. “I’m trying to get a job, and you know, and you stand in the unemployment line and you bullshit and stuff.” She said she was tired of nursing and wanted to work—screen printing or even waiting tables—while Jason was at school.

“All through nursing school, I waitressed,” she said, bursting into tears. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ve got such a problem. I’m so embarrassed. It’s gonna hurt him so bad.”

“Listen, it’s gonna hurt who?”

“It’s gonna hurt Jim because he’s tried so hard and he’s done so good for me. It’s gonna make him feel, well, I’m sure there’s gonna be some mistrust and stuff, but I just feel so bad. I just wanted to get some stuff for Jason and us.

“You know, if you look at the purchases, it’s mostly for them, you know,” Dana said, now fully sobbing. “I didn’t get a lot of things for me. I didn’t go clothes shopping and stuff. I got some boots and perfume. Everything else was for them.”

Greco was attempting to comfort her, but he was revulsed. Sure, he thought. It was all for them. Does she really think we’ll believe that? Let her think we do …

When she settled down, Greco asked about June. Dana denied having had a fight with June, that she had not told Dana anything was bothering her.

“No, she, she’s very flighty, and said she’d be in and out for a few days and this and that. You know, she, uh, didn’t catch where she was or anything. But she said she’d just gotten home after being out a couple of days, but I don’t know where she was.

“I don’t know if she was with family or, I don’t know. That miffs me. It really miffs me.”

Here she was blaming June, Greco thought, but it sounded like she was about to say something significant.

“Why?”

“’Cause, ’cause … I can’t imagine it; that somebody … it’s just so weird. I mean, I’m sorry about what happened to that other lady, but you know, I don’t, it’s not like what happened to June and Nana, you know. I just can’t imagine.”

She’s miffed? She’s comparing the murder of Dora to the murders of June and Norma?

“That’s, that’s why I’m trying to understand what’s going on,” Greco said softly.

“I got desperate to buy things. Shopping puts me to rest,” Dana said with a chuckle. “I’m lost without it.”