The homicide detective who drew the case was named Lutz.
Six months before I’d left the force, when I was an internal affairs officer, I’d had Lutz’s partner fired for working security at an illegal casino in the Fair Park section of Dallas.
Lutz was involved, too, taking a slice off the casino’s bank in exchange for providing notice if vice was planning a raid. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough evidence to warrant his termination and then pass muster with the civil service board. So, Lutz remained a cop, but one with very little chance for career advancement.
Now we were sitting across a table from each other in an interview room at police headquarters, a sleek, six-story building just south of downtown. They’d already processed me at the jail, the sheriff’s deputies silent as they took my mug shots and fingerprints. Nobody liked a cop killer.
The room looked like an insurance adjuster’s office. Tile floor, white walls, acoustic drop ceilings, everything brightly lit by the overhead fluorescents.
The main differences: the video camera in the corner recording everything and my cuffed hands, Rose’s blood still on my skin despite the samples taken by the crime scene techs and the fingerprinting at the jail.
Lutz was in his fifties, but he dressed like a Dallas cop from a generation ago. He wore a pale green jacket with a western yoke, beige polyester pants, brown cowboy boots, and a smirk on his face, the latter no doubt because I was now in his crosshairs as a suspect.
He pulled a card from his pocket and read me the Miranda warning, his voice monotone.
When he was finished, he said, “I never figured you for a killer.”
I desperately wanted to tell him what had happened, the same facts that I’d related to Corporal Hernandez. I wanted to get them started looking for the Toyota Camry, but I’d been on the other side of the table enough to know what the proper response was.
“I want my lawyer.”
He put the card away. “I know Rose dumped your sorry ass, but that was a long time ago. Can’t believe you waited this long to pop her.”
I didn’t speak.
“People around here, they still remember when you two got into that screaming match in the parking lot. You threw a walkie-talkie at her, right?”
I tried to keep my face blank. Tried not to think of Rose’s gray skin as she lay dead.
“And now we got a witness who saw you two scuffling,” he said. “Thirty minutes before you shot her.”
The woman at the pool. Rose jerking her arm free from my hand.
“I thought you were smarter than that, Dylan.”
“My lawyer needs to be here. Even a bent cop like you has to follow the rules on occasion.”
He chuckled. “A case like this, don’t count on making bail. I’ll make sure you’re not in protective custody. Should be a fun time.”
Lutz left, and I remembered the first real argument Rose and I had, not long after we were married.
She’d been working for the sexual assaults unit, investigating a string of rapes, college girls who were followed home from a series of three bars in the same block near the university.
The attacks were violent; four of the victims ended up in the hospital for periods of time. But the rapist wore a condom so there was no DNA evidence.
Rose had started with the obvious—boyfriends and ex-boyfriends, online acquaintances, people in the area with a record of similar crimes. She came up with nothing.
From there she progressed to employees at the bars—waitstaff, bartenders, even busboys.
She’d found a valet who’d been arrested ten years earlier for aggravated assault, no conviction, and thought maybe she’d gotten lucky. But the valet, a small Latino in his late twenties, had an unshakeable alibi for two of the attacks, and his physical appearance was at odds with the victims’ descriptions—a tall, heavyset man, middle-aged, most likely an Anglo.
Rose dug deeper, as was her way. She investigated the owners of the bars, clearing each one, before turning to the building where the three establishments were located.
There, she hit pay dirt.
The owner of the building was a Caucasian in his forties, six-three, 240 pounds. A dropout from the university, he’d been arrested or detained on campus a half-dozen times in the past decade for a variety of offenses, all involving female students.
Harassment, lewd behavior. Sexual battery.
He’d come from a family of influence—a grandfather had been mayor at one point—so the cases were never investigated as vigorously as they might have been otherwise.
Tucked in one of the files was a handwritten note from an arresting officer—The vic says the perp took her sorority pin.
From a photo array, two of the seven women identified him as their rapist. One thought he was responsible but couldn’t be sure. The last four, the ones who’d been hospitalized, IDed other people.
Rose arrested the man at his high-rise apartment, and a team of investigators searched the premises, uncovering a treasure trove of items belonging to female college students—clothing branded with the school’s mascot, notebooks and key rings, half-used tubes of lipstick, and dozens of pieces of jewelry.
And seven sorority pins.
Unfortunately for Rose’s case, the seven pins didn’t belong to her victims. They were either for different sororities or of an older style.
Even worse for the case were the man’s lawyers, who threatened to sue the city for malicious arrest. Their client was an upstanding member of the community, they said, one who’d be able to provide airtight alibis for all the assaults.
The man bonded out within hours, and Rose did what frustrated cops sometimes do but never talked about. She decided to get him off the street by whatever means she could. So, she called in a favor with a narcotics officer, who pulled over the alleged rapist for a busted taillight and just happened to discover an eight-ball of coke on his floorboard in plain view.
The drugs violated the terms of his bond for the rape charge, so he was sent back to jail, out of circulation at least for a while.
And that had led to our disagreement.
“What was the point?” I’d asked. “You planted evidence to lock up a guy with a clean record—other than the campus arrests.”
She’d shrugged. “He’s off the street. That counts for something.”
“He’s got good lawyers,” I’d said. “He’ll be out in no time. Better to concentrate on the rape investigation, work on breaking the guy’s alibis. Look at him for past offenses. Try to find who those other pins belong to.”
“Every day he’s in lockup is a day he’s not hurting some innocent person,” she’d said. “You take a win where you can get it.”
“That’s one way to look at it,” I’d said, trying not to get angry. “But is it worth committing a felony?”
She left the room in a huff and we never talked about what she’d done again.
I wish the story had a clean ending, but like many things in life, it did not. The accused, an arrogant loudmouth who’d gotten into a number of fights with other inmates, slipped and fell in the jail shower, hitting his head, resulting in his demise. He was alone at the time, and his death was termed accidental. No water was running and there wasn’t any soap on the floor, but nobody much cared about the details, not even his family, who almost seemed relieved.
One footnote to the case: the only alibi his attorneys could provide appeared solid. The accused had hotel receipts for an out-of-town trip when the third woman was assaulted.
So, was he the guy responsible? Who knows? The rapes did stop after he was off the street. Maybe that was just a coincidence. Maybe Rose’s actions had achieved some form of justice.
Lutz entered the interview room.
“Your attorney is here.” He leaned over the table so our faces were only inches apart. “You killed one of our own. My mission in life is to see you on a one-way bus to Huntsville.”