Mortal Danger (21 page)

“Now you’re squared away—living a good life, huh?”

“Trying. I mean, I’m sure you must know what I was in prison for?”

“I just heard it was manslaughter,” Benson said. “What
were
you in prison for?”

“I killed the person who molested my child.”

“How’d you kill ’em?” Benson’s voice was calmer than he felt, but he didn’t want to put Tavares on guard.

“Stabbed ’em. It was a her. Family member.”

“What kind of a family member?”

“My mother.”

“
You killed your mother?
” For the moment, Ben Benson couldn’t hide his shock. This casual and cooperative man in front of him had just admitted killing his own mother! Benson regained his composure before Tavares even noticed how astounded he was.

Daniel explained that he had killed his mother for molesting his daughter, back in 1991 in Massachusetts.

“Well, that’s too bad,” Benson said carefully. “That’s not good for anyone to go through.”

“Well, I made it through, you know. I made it.”

He sounded as if he expected a medal for his bravery.

Detective Tom Catey had a few questions to ask Daniel. The tattooed parolee had made it sound as if he and Brian Mauck were close friends, and that he and Jennifer and Brian and Beverly had often mingled socially. But, under Catey’s close questioning, he finally admitted that he had visited their home only three times—once when he and Jennifer were “invited down” to see the Maucks’ house, once to start work on Brian’s tattoo, and the third time when Brian asked him to ride motorcycles with him—lending one of his own bikes to Daniel.

These visits had begun in mid-October, only a month before. Tavares insisted that he and Jennifer had been invited to Brian’s birthday party, but they’d had another engagement that night. All of the poker games had taken place at Jeff and Kristel Freitas’s home.

Daniel and Jennifer lived in a cluttered, crowded little travel trailer with what looked like hand-me-down furniture, and they had to take showers at her brother’s or her parents’ mobile homes. Their only income was the hundred dollars a day that Jeff paid Daniel. Even though he didn’t say it, it was obvious that the ex-prisoner from Massachusetts was envious of the home the Maucks shared and the life they lived.

But was it enough to spark murder?

There in the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department interview room, the first tape ran out at a quarter to midnight. They took a break. Both Benson and Catey were stunned by the news that this seemingly easygoing man had stabbed his own mother to death. His affect and his attitude didn’t jibe with what he had done.

If he could kill his mother, he probably was capable of killing neighbors he hardly knew.

They had the matching shoe prints. They had the palm print that matched the print in blood on the interior door at the Maucks’ home. They had caught him in lie after lie, and they had witnesses who could refute his statements. In essence, they had
him
.

Their main question was
Why?
And what, if any, was Jennifer’s part in the cruel crime? She appeared to be besotted with her tattooed bridegroom, and they suspected she would have done just about anything he asked of her.

Ben Benson put in a fresh tape and they continued.

“At this point,” Benson said to the man across the table from him, “we’ve got evidence to arrest you for the murder of Brian and Beverly.”

“
What?
” Daniel Tavares had thought he was doing so well, completely snowing the two detectives.

Benson continued. “And one of the reasons that we’ve talked to you kind of extensively here initially is because we know the answers to these questions that we’ve asked you, and we know that a lot of what you’ve told us are lies. Now, that being said, we’ve got some things here and hopefully you’re gonna be man enough to stand up here and talk to us. Do some damage control. Here’s what we think….”

Benson told Daniel that he was going to be arrested for two murders, and, with his background, he was probably going to prison for the rest of his life.

“I’d just as soon not see Jennifer go down with you,” he continued. “I think we’ve also got evidence that she was in the house—”

“We were all in the house,” Daniel blurted. “That day when I tattooed—”

“Like I said, we’ve got evidence that you were in the house when the murders happened.”

“That’s impossible. I was in bed.”

Daniel Tavares protested
that
he
had never kicked the door panel in, or done anything with the front door’s locks. Then he added that he really
had
seen a red truck there, and he thought the occupants had kicked the door in. His next fantasy lie was that he’d met someone to whom he was to give the gun back, and that man had been driving a small white truck! That made a red truck, a white truck, and a green truck that were allegedly involved in the execution of the Maucks.

If it hadn’t been so tragic, his rambling lies might have been funny. But the detectives knew far too much for Daniel Tavares to be a convincing liar. They had the tapes from Ma’s and Pa’s Roundup, showing him in the crowd. They knew he’d joined up with Carl Rider, and that they’d smoked marijuana and meth. They knew when the tires of Jennifer’s Ford Explorer had been slashed, and they knew that there had never been any trucks with chrome roll bars in the Maucks’ driveway.

It was Daniel Tavares’s turn to be shocked. “Things are out of control here,” he protested, as Benson and Catey pointed out the physical evidence they had that placed him inside the Maucks’ home when they were killed.

Benson asked again if Jennifer was involved.

“She’s not involved. Jennifer’s not involved at all.”

“Okay,” Benson said. “Tell us what happened.”

“It was a hired thing,” Tavares said faintly.

“Who hired you?”

“Somebody that don’t like them.” Their subject was obviously scurrying frantically around his brain, trying to find something that would convince them he’d acted under duress, something that would save him from facing the death penalty. He insisted he couldn’t tell them who had hired him to kill the Maucks. “My whole family would be killed. I can’t do that.”

Since his mother was already dead—thanks to him—the detectives wondered what family he was talking about. Jennifer? Jeff and Kristel Freitas, who were already scared to death of
him
?

He was slowly beginning to confess, but he couldn’t recall when he’d gone over to the Maucks’ house. He’d been high “on weed.” He refused to discuss exactly what had happened, but he was adamant that Jennifer “didn’t have nothing to do with it. Nothing.”

“Does she know? Did you tell her what happened?”

Tavares refused to answer. He changed the subject to say he was supposed to get paid $20,000 to carry out the double murder.

“Did you get money up front?” Benson asked.

“No.”

“What kind of hit man doesn’t get something up front?”

“A stupid one,” Tavares answered glumly. And he might have been right on target there. No, he hadn’t taken any pictures of the bodies to show to the people who had hired him.

There had been two shoe prints in blood. One matched Daniel’s shoes, and the other was a mystery. They thought it could be Jennifer’s—but her husband kept insisting she’d never been to the death site. He was trying to protect her and to build on his story of being a gun for hire—but the people behind it all were the ones who gave him the gun and the ammunition. He couldn’t recall what kind of gun it was, not even the caliber. No, he didn’t know where Jennifer’s .22 handgun was.

“We know you left after you shot Brian,” Ben Benson said. “And that you came back at some point later on?”

He admitted that he’d been away from the Maucks’ home for only five minutes—he’d gone up near the barn to wash his hands. But he’d always been alone. After the shooting, he said he’d given the gun back to those conspiring to kill Brian and Beverly Mauck.

The detectives had tended to believe that the young couple were killed sometime in the wee hours of Friday night–Saturday morning. But Daniel Tavares said he had gone to their house in the morning, after it was light out. Brian had been sitting on the couch, and Daniel said he’d told him what the “people” wanted him to say:

“‘Brian, listen,’ I said. ‘You owe a lot of money and this has to be done.’ That was it. I shot him.”

The confessed murderer said that he’d shot Brian in the
side of the head first, and then again when he slumped over and fell onto the floor.

Bev had come running from some room in the back of the house. He had shot her “at close range” as she ran toward the front door.

She had almost made it.

“Okay,” Benson said evenly. “Did you physically grab her?”

“Yeah. By the hair.”

“Did you rape her?”

“No.”

“’Cause you know, we’re gonna find that out.”

“No.”

“There was no sexual assault?”

“No.”

It was clear that Bev Mauck had tried desperately to get away from Daniel Tavares, to get outside where she could hide or scream for help. But she was a very small woman and he was the “gorilla.” How many times he’d shot her, he didn’t know. He remembered grabbing her by the foot—after he shot her—and dragging her over near Brian’s body. He also recalled that she was nude. He didn’t know why, but he’d covered them both up with the blue blankets.

Sometime later he had come back to the house to make sure that nothing was out of place.

Everything was out of place, and the two murder victims lay in their own blood. Benson thought he had covered them up so he wouldn’t have to look at what he had done.

For some bizarre reason, Daniel said he had attempted to sweep up the blood. They already knew that.

“Were you trying to get rid of your shoe prints?”

“No,” Tavares answered. “I didn’t even know I left shoe prints.”

The suspect said he’d felt as if he “wasn’t really there.” He blamed it on the antipsychotic meds that he’d just begun taking again: Buspar, Klonopin, Effexor, and Seroquel.

(Pill bottles with prescription labels would be found when a search warrant gave detectives permission to go into the Tavareses’ small trailer. One was to treat seizures, and the rest were for anxiety, depression, and bipolar disorder.)

Add alcohol, marijuana, and meth, and the detectives saw why he might have felt as if he wasn’t there. But that didn’t make him innocent. Diminished capacity doesn’t fly as a defense. Daniel Tavares had used illegal drugs along with prescribed antipsychotic drugs and alcohol of his own free will. And his brain had spun evil scenarios.

But
why
?

He still claimed he’d been hired to carry out two hits. Somehow, Jennifer had known what happened, but he couldn’t remember how she knew.

Ben Benson pointed out that it didn’t make him less guilty because he’d been hired to kill, and he agreed that he knew that. He hadn’t returned the gun to the actual conspirators but had given it to a mutual friend. “I was told I’d be getting a call. And I haven’t got no call—”

“I don’t believe that happened,” Benson interrupted. “You’ve been to prison. You’ve been around the block.”

The detective sergeant suggested once again that “an obvious smart guy” like Tavares wouldn’t carry out a
hit without having some money up front and without getting a guarantee that he was going to get more money. “You’re not gonna go kill two people and then sit around and wait for the phone to ring…. That doesn’t make sense,” Benson said. “I don’t know if Brian owed you money for the tattoo and he didn’t pay. What was the real reason?”

“I wouldn’t do that for a hundred-dollar tattoo.”

Daniel finally admitted that he had told Jennifer what he had done, and that she “kind of freaked out.”

But she definitely hadn’t helped him clean off his shoes or wash his clothing. He’d been wearing a gray hoodie with Sylvester, the cartoon cat, on it, and a pair of jeans. They wondered how he could have walked away from the Maucks’ home without blood on his clothes or himself.

They didn’t believe him. There was too much bloodshed in the house for him to have escaped getting it splashed on himself. But they hadn’t located any bloody clothing. Somehow, he had to have gotten rid of it.

Tom Catey had some questions of his own, wondering just where Daniel had met the person who wanted Brian Mauck killed. Tavares continued to be cagey, insisting that he had shot Brian only because he owed “some guy” a lot of money over gambling. He’d met a
friend
of the real instigator at the Roundup; the arrangements for cold-blooded murder had all taken place through him.

The in-between man had recognized that Tavares had several prison tattoos and questioned him about his past. The stranger then mentioned that a man who owed big gambling debts lived close to Tavares. He named Brian
Mauck as the man who hadn’t paid the loan shark. That had been about six weeks before.

“So that was about the time you were doing the tattoo [on Brian]?” Catey asked.

“Yes,” Daniel answered, but he knew nothing about where Brian had gambled, how much he owed. In fact, he’d never discussed gambling with Brian. None of the other investigators he had talked to had mentioned that Brian Mauck had a gambling problem (which he did not).

“Okay,” Catey said. “
Why
would you agree to do this?”

“For the money. To get a place to live.”

It was obvious that Tavares was making things up as he went along. He’d already admitted to two murders, but he was trying to protect Jennifer. He insisted that he was hired to kill both of the Maucks for ten thousand dollars apiece, but Jennifer hadn’t known about it.

“Did you use anything to muffle the sound of the gun going off?”

“Yeah, a towel.” He believed he’d found it right there in his neighbors’ house.

Brian had come to the door about seven and let him in. He hadn’t been upset about having such an early visitor, Daniel said, and he hadn’t argued with him. Tavares said he was totally focused on his mission to kill Brian, and he admitted he hadn’t even tried to discuss ways Brian could pay the money he allegedly owed.

He’d simply carried out his orders, shooting Brian and then Beverly. He said he’d been “so med-ed out” that he was “in a fog.” He told Tom Catey he didn’t know why he had pulled Beverly over by Brian.

“How come you covered them up—took the time to put the blanket over them?” Catey asked the question again.

“Respect.”

Both Ben Benson and Tom Catey were struck speechless for a moment. This was a man who seemed to have no empathy for others. He had taken two lives for no good reason they could see, and now he was talking about “respect.”

He just didn’t get it. It was almost like talking to a robot.

Lieutenant Brent Bomkamp walked into the interview room. He was a new factor in the dialogue. First, he complimented Tavares on being a stand-up guy who had basically told them the truth about the Maucks’ murder. Tavares preened.

But then Bomkamp accused him of lying about part of his story.

“We know it, you know it, and what’s gonna happen is these guys [who] have been working their asses off for the last two days are gonna have to go out and try to follow these little threads you’re laying down. And you know they will end in nothing that fits with what you’re telling us.

“These are smart guys,” Bomkamp said, pointing to Ben Benson and Tom Catey. “These are my best guys. We’ve put you at the scene. We’ve got other physical evidence that’s not matching what you’re saying. You’ve shown you’re willing to be a stand-up guy. You’ve been honest. Just tell the whole frickin’ truth.”

Tavares was off balance, going from Bomkamp’s com
pliments to his accusations, and he protested weakly. Bomkamp assured him that his detectives would find out the whole truth, but they would have to search all of Tavares’s property, question his wife, and it would take weeks before the case moved ahead.

“Nobody hired you to do this,” Bomkamp asked flatly. “Did they?”

“No.” Tavares admitted that he had lied to save face. He said that Brian Mauck had insulted him, calling him a “fucking punk,” and that Bev had said even worse things about Jennifer Lynn, calling her the
c
word. Maybe Brian
was
mad because he’d gone down to his home so early in the morning to ask about the tattoo, Daniel allowed, but Brian’s insults had just been too much for a man who’d spent so much time in prison. Being called a “fucking punk” had deeply insulted him.

Although the three detectives in the room doubted that either Brian or Bev Mauck had ever used those epithets, they didn’t argue with Tavares.

Now, finally, he had told as much of the truth as he probably ever would. Transcribed, his lies and his slow revelation of what had really happened took a hundred and twenty-five pages.

The confession by Daniel Tavares proved once again that a well-trained and experienced detective knows he must avoid tunnel vision. Beverly Mauck had had reason to be afraid, but she’d been afraid of the wrong person. Billy Mack, who had probably stolen from their house more than once, had scared her, certainly, but this misfit neigh
bor she’d scarcely noticed, a man she had once fixed dinner for, who had left his mark on her husband’s back, the man she and Brian tolerated because they felt kind of sorry for him, was far more dangerous than anyone in the neighborhood could have imagined.

It was very late on Sunday night, November 18, and Ben Benson next turned his attention to Jennifer Tavares. He was curious to find out if she truly knew her husband’s background, and more curious to know if she had returned to the Maucks’ house with him after the murder to help him “clean up.” She might well have been an accomplice to murder before, during, or after the fact.

Benson was inclined to think that Jennifer had probably helped Daniel
after
the fact. She listened to her Miranda rights and was very concerned. She debated phoning an attorney but realized that might mean she would have to stay in jail overnight. When Benson mentioned that she might face time in prison, Jennifer was horrified. Apparently, that had never occurred to her. She wanted to go home, but Ben Benson explained that her trailer would have to be searched thoroughly, and she could not go home until that was done. She asked then if she could go home to her brother’s mobile home.

That would depend on her attitude and her willingness to tell him the truth, Benson said. He explained that her husband had just confessed to killing Brian and Beverly.