Reel to Real (29 page)

Detective Rojo scratched his head. “So I’m curious. Why’d you buy the shotgun?”

“I bought those guns for Larry, okay,” Shane said.

“Larry?”

Shane nodded.

The two detectives exchanged glances.

“Have you ever been to Esther Beckley’s house?” Yost asked.

“No.”

“Did you spend time with her?”

“I only started hanging around with her since the time her boyfriend absconded.” Shane leaned in on his elbows, trying to hold back a smirk.

Rojo peered over his reading glasses. “You drove to the mountains.”

“No.”

“You drove your car to the mountains.”

“No.”

“You told others that you drove it there.”

“No.” Shane twitched.

“How are you going to explain that your car was there, your license plate given out?” Rojo asked.

“No.”

“We have your license plate. We have your tracks.”

Shane threw his shoulders back. “It couldn’t be. Tracks cannot be there. They can’t be ... my car wasn’t there.”

No one said anything for at least a minute.

Yost reached under the table. “You thirsty?” He placed a plastic bottle of water in front of Shane.

“I don’t want it.”

Yost put it back.

Shane drummed his fingers on the table. “How about a cigarette? I could really use a smoke.”

Yost looked at Rojo and Rojo pulled out a pack of Marlboros from his inner-jacket pocket. He presented them to Shane.

“Thanks,” Shane said, pulling one out.

“We have a witness that puts you at Hollywood Video on the night of the crime, Shane,” Yost continued. “You remember seeing a guy about 5’10” in a light green shirt?”

“No.”

“With short brown hair?”

“No.”

“He’s not going to describe to us a black Fiero parked in the parking lot, is he?”

“No, he shouldn’t know, and if he says he does, he’s lying.” Shane leaned forward and coughed a couple of times. “I mean it’s not my car.”

“If someone said that at about 11 PM they saw your car leave your apartment complex, they would be lying too, right?”

“Yes.”

“So you were there Friday night?” Yost took another sip of coffee. “Right?”

“Where?”

“Hollywood Video?”

Shane looked up at the ceiling. “On Friday? Yeah, on Friday I was there. That’s true. I got drunk at a bar down the street. I wanted to get a movie to watch.”

“Esther go with you?”

“No, I was alone Friday night.”

“What about Saturday night?”

Shane let the silence stretch out.

“I asked you a question, Shane,” Yost said, irritated.

Shane bit his lower lip.

“Did you hear me, Shane? What about Saturday night?”

Still no response.

“I’ll sit here and wait for that answer Shane. Were you there on Saturday?”

Shane took a deep breath. “Okay, okay. I didn’t want to tell you all this, and I know I’m going to get my ass kicked for doing it. I might even get killed, but here’s what really happened,” Shane said in a low sedated voice.

“Esther came over at about eleven that night and asked to borrow my car. She said she had something she had to take care of. Something important. She told me she wanted to borrow the neighbor’s jacket, too. I don’t know why she asked for that — she just did. She also said she wanted the guns.”

Shane laced his fingers together.

“She said she absolutely
had
to have the guns. That was the most important part. She said it was something that had to be done that night. I said okay, that’s fine, go ahead. I said, just don’t wreck my car. She laughed when I said that and then she took off. I don’t have anyone to back me up on this, but I stayed home all night by myself. I’m telling you the truth on this part. All I did was watch TV and do a puzzle. A find-a-word puzzle. I could show you the puzzle if you want. Then I went to sleep.”

Yost and Rojo sat in their chairs listening, letting Shane talk without interruption.

“At five the next morning,” Shane continued. “She came back to my house acting all strange-like, kinda paranoid really, and told me she had fucked up bad. Really, really bad, and that I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about anything.”

Shane stopped talking and started crying again. He wiped tears from his eyes and sniffled.

“Is that how you remember it Shane?” Rojo asked.

“Yeah, that’s what happened. And then later that day, she told me she killed people,” he sighed.

Rojo and Yost looked at each other briefly. Then Rojo got up and left the room.

***

Esther eyed the Coke can for a few moments longer and then grasped it with both hands. It felt good. Cold and refreshing. Turned out she
was
thirsty, monumentally thirsty. What difference did it make anyway if she drank some soda?

She popped the top and poured the Coke down her throat like she was dousing a fire. The sugar, the flavor, the bubbles — exquisite!  She almost moaned in delight but caught herself, remembering her whereabouts.

Returning her focus to the watchful police officers, she looked at them, eyes wide.

Another man in a dark gray suit, walked into the tiny room where the three of them sat. He faced the sitting detectives and informed them, with Esther listening, that the other suspect, Shane Harrison, had started talking. He said that Harrison said he didn’t have anything to do with the Hollywood Video murders. Harrison said that Esther Beckley had masterminded the whole thing and framed him.

“What?” Esther almost shouted.

The detective then turned to Esther and spoke directly to her. “Yes, ma’am. Mr. Harrison said you came over his house, asked to borrow his car, and then didn’t come back until after five the next morning. He said when you brought the car back you were upset and told him you had killed five people.”

Esther’s mouth dropped open.
That lousy lying sonofabitch.
Her head throbbed. He was trying to frame
her
. She didn't know what to think.

While trying to process this new information, she became aware of voices in the next room. She could hear Shane. Apparently his holding cell was adjacent to hers. The noise level coming from his direction was escalating. She heard a lot of yelling and what sounded like a child crying. Shane was crying.

When the “messenger” detective left the room, Detective Geri redirected her attention to Esther. “Is that true what Harrison is saying? That Hollywood Video is all you?”

The old saying, “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones” came to Esther’s mind. This guy was unreal. What he told the police was ridiculous. She started to get angry.

***

Shane sat silently in the interview room with Detective Yost, waiting for Detective Rojo to return. While he waited, two uniformed officers entered. One carried a small cloth bag, from which he pulled a clear plastic bag and a pair of scissors.

“We’re going to need to get a hair standard from you, Mr. Harrison,” the officer said.

With a deer-in-the-headlights look, Shane jumped up from his chair and held his hands out in front of him. “No, you’re not,” he screeched, hysterically. “I’m not giving you any of my fucking hair.”

The uniforms radioed for help. Immediately, two more officers arrived. They forced Shane to the ground and handcuffed him. He struggled and cried throughout.

During the struggle, a clump of his hair was snipped off and deposited into a small, pre-labeled bag. The uniforms and Detective Yost left at the same time, leaving Shane alone in the room.

***

Esther felt like she had two choices, and they were both terrible. She could either let Shane send her up the river with his outrageous lies, or she could send herself up the river with the truth. There was no way out.

Someone was saying something to her, but the words weren’t reaching her brain. She felt a tap her on her shoulder.

“Ms. Beckley,” Detective Geri said. “Were you involved with the robbery that took place at the Hollywood Video store on March 3, 1996?”

“Uh huh,” Esther heard herself saying.

“Did you participate in that robbery?”

“Uh huh.”

“Did you commit this robbery with Shane Harrison?”

“Yes.”

As she spoke, Esther felt strangely better. A lot of the haze and fear that had been hanging over her lifted. She realized that if she told the cops what happened, she would finally get some protection from Shane — the maniac that haunted her day and night. She wanted his high-stakes games to end.

Esther sat up straight and put her hands in front of her, one on top of the other. Then she asked for another Coke. Another can arrived shortly and she again gripped it tightly. With a faltering voice, she told the detectives about the video store robbery, about her distracting the grandparents while gunshots rang out inside the store, and about the long drive to the East Mountains.

Regarding the murders of the McDougall's, she told them a different version than she had told John Lausell. She said Shane did
all
the shooting. He fired the shotgun that killed the grandparents, as well as the TEC-9.

Even as she sat in the police station spilling her guts, it felt surreal. She felt better being around the cops than she had ever felt about being around Shane.

***

Forty-five minutes later, the two detectives returned to Shane’s holding cell, their faces expressionless. Shane appeared to have calmed himself down.

Detective Yost opened up a green file folder and stared at it. He spoke without looking up. “Shane, it turns out, your partner Esther is cooperating.”

“She’s not my partner,” Shane replied.

“Call her what you like. She’s giving us some good information. She says she went to the video store with you Friday
and
Saturday night. Saturday night, she says, is the night you killed the kids and the grandparents.”

There was a subtle change in Shane's eyes, but he did not reply.

“She says you did all the shooting.”

“I wasn’t there.”

“But she was there?”

“Yes.”

“Who was with her?”

“I don’t know. She wouldn’t tell me. Larry maybe.”

“Again Larry?”

“Maybe.”

“And you’re covering up for Esther and Larry?”

“Definitely Esther and maybe Larry, but it might be someone else and that someone else will kill me if I say his name.”

“If you think someone else is involved, you need to tell us. Otherwise we’re only looking at you.”

“I shouldn’t say this, but it might have been a guy named John Lausell. An ex-con who absconded.”

“So you think he might be in on it?”

“Right.”

“But you knew about all these murders?”

“Just what she told me.”

“But you knew all roads led back to you? All the evidence? The car, the guns, the leather jacket?”

“I knew she made it look bad for me.”

“You’re playing games with us, Shane.”

“No.”

Detective Rojo leaned forward in his chair. “You were relieved, right? How we had the wrong description. How the news media kept putting out a wrong description about the black van. That was good? Right?”

“Right.”

“What did Esther say about it?” Rojo asked.

“She thought it was pretty funny. I felt relieved.”

“I’ll bet,” Yost said.

Rojo pushed back his sleeves and got animated. “Shane, we’re not getting anywhere, are we? You’re just bullshitting us to amuse yourself. Esther Beckley is telling us stuff that matches the evidence, and you’re telling us stuff that’s bullshit. You have nowhere to go with this if you don’t tell us the truth.”

“I have you told you the truth.”

“Let’s talk about the jacket,” Rojo said, slowly tapping his fingers on the arms of his chair.

Shane lifted his eyebrows.

“The witness at the video store said the man was wearing a motorcycle jacket. That was you.”

“No.”

“You were in the store in that leather jacket Saturday night.”

“No.”

“When you killed the kids at the store, the blood splattered on the jacket.”

“I was not at the store.”

“Just because you cleaned it doesn’t mean it won’t have blood on it,” Rojo said.

“What are you talking about?”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about.”

“No, I don’t.”

“The victim’s blood is on the leather jacket you were wearing.”

“What leather jacket? I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“Shane. Again, we have spoken to your neighbor. He told us you borrowed his leather jacket.”

Shane crossed his arms. He took his time before responding.

“Okay, you’re talking about the jacket Esther had me go get from the neighbor. Yes, I know that jacket.”

“You tried to clean the blood off that jacket.”

“I cleaned up the jacket after she left. She didn’t know.”

Yost pulled out a bottled water for himself and took a drink. Shane put an unlit cigarette stub in him mouth. “Do we need a break?” Yost asked.

“No.”

“When we go in the grandparents’ car, we are going to find your hairs in there aren’t we? Your DNA?”

“My hairs won’t be there, my DNA won’t be there.”

“We’ve already found your prints on the car.”

“No.”

“You were at Hollywood Video Friday and Saturday night. Right?

“I was there on Friday night.” Shane admitted. “But on Saturday I was home by myself.”

“Doing a puzzle?”

“Right.”

“So you didn’t have anything to do with what happened Saturday night?”

“Well, I’m sure they’re going to get my face from that Friday tape, find out who I am, see my record and I will probably be a suspect.”

“You’re probably right,” Yost said, nodding in agreement.

After four hours of interrogation, Shane asked to use the restroom. The tape recorder was turned off and he was escorted by two officers to and from the restroom. The recorder was restarted upon his return.

“Why did you bury the guns?” Rojo asked, rubbing his forehead.

“I didn’t bury them. I was there when they got dug up.”

“So you saw the guns after the murders?”

“I saw them, I didn’t dig them up.”