“Have you got a DVD player, Mr. Wagner?” I asked. “I’d like to play this for you.”
“Why?” he replied. “Is that a good movie?”
“I think you’ll enjoy it. Agent Garrity and I certainly did,” I said, with a grin he must have found infuriating. “It’s a video of you, Ty Dickson, and Grant Roberts at El Camarero the day after Billie’s death. We can’t hear what you’re all saying, but there’s a lot to see, a lot that explains why you were all there the day after Bil-lie died. You had a bit of business to finish up, didn’t you?”
I put the DVD on the table, where he could look at it. Wagner didn’t say anything, just focused on the silver disk as if it were a bill from the I.R.S. The old man wasn’t grinning any longer.
“Now it’s time for you to start talking,” I suggested. “There are three of you involved in Billie’s murder, and this is the day after. Not hard to see on this tape that what we’re looking at is a payoff.”
“You can’t prove that!” the old man snapped. “You can’t even hear what we’re saying.”
“Not yet, but the jury will be able to see for themselves how delighted you all were on the day after Billie’s death. Maybe we can get someone who reads lips to interpret. You know, what’s so lucky is that the camera was pointed right at your face,” I said. “I bet we’ll
be able to figure out every word you said that afternoon. That is a stroke of luck.”
“We were discussing the weather,” he said. “You’ll never be able to prove what we were talking about. I don’t believe it.”
“Maybe not. But the truth is that I won’t need to prove it, Mr. Wagner,” I said. “I’m doing you a favor here. Do you think for even a moment that your old friend Ty Dickson will go to prison to protect you? Do you have any doubt that if I’d gone to him first he wouldn’t have offered you up to get on top of this thing? You know him. He’s old and sick. How eager is he going to be to spend his few remaining years rotting in a cell?”
Wagner glowered at us, furious. “How dare you?” he said, spitting out the words.
“What the lieutenant is suggesting, Mr. Wagner, is pretty obvious,” David said. He appeared to be enjoying our sit-down with Wagner as much as I was. Why not? It’s exciting to close in on murderers. “In case you need a translation, here’s one: whoever is the first, you or Dickson, to make a deal is the one who comes out of this the cleanest. Take too long and odds are that you’ll die in prison.”
“After all, it’s not like you were the shooter,” I said. “Why right now, we’re getting a judge’s signature on a search warrant for Grant Roberts’s house. Right now our people are pulling together everything they need to collect his shoes and all of his clothes. Think we’re not going to find Billie Cox’s blood somewhere? That’s all we need. A single drop of blood can put you in prison until the day you die. That lawyer, McBride, is a nice fella. Well, he told me that you and Dickson were trying to ensure your legacies by building a children’s hospital. Imagine what a life sentence for solicitation of murder will do to your reputations.”
“I don’t,” he blustered. “I’m going to call my—”
Before he could lawyer up, I went on, leaning toward him, my right thumb and index finger forming the smallest circle. I held it up
so he could see just a speck of light through the center. “All we need is the tiniest, tiniest molecule of Billie’s blood,” I said. “You’ve seen those shows on T V. You know what our lab people can do. You have any doubt we’ll find what we need?”
At that, I shut up and let the old codger consider his options.
“Like I said, I want my lawyer,” he said. “Now.”
“That’s fine,” I said, with a shrug. “As a matter of fact, Agent Garrity is going to read you your rights. We want this by the book, so there aren’t any technicalities to argue later.”
“You have the right to . . .” David began, reciting the warning every suspect in a criminal case is required to be told.
“That’s it, Mr. Wagner. You’re done. Go ahead and call your lawyer,” I said, when David finished. “Meanwhile, Agent Garrity and I will be on our way across the street to Mr. Dickson’s house. I’m willing to bet that he’ll see this our way. He’ll get the deal we were offering you.”
That took Wagner back a bit. “What kind of deal?” he asked, squinting at me.
“Ten years, with a recommendation for probation in six,” I said. “We’ve got a prosecutor lined up to sign the paperwork.”
“At my age, I’d probably never live six years,” he said. “Especially not in one of those hellholes.”
“Maybe not,” I said. “But I guarantee you won’t survive a life sentence with a mandatory forty years before you’re eligible for parole.”
David and I sat and stared at the old geezer, silent, while I left that DVD sitting there, right where Wagner could see it. The old man extended an arthritic hand, the joints swollen and disfigured, and picked it up. He looked at what was written across the top.
“We’ve got it all figured out, Mr. Wagner, even your motive. You killed Billie because she threatened to tell everyone in the oil patch about your little scheme. We know because she left a note
indicating she planned to fill in Bobby Barker the following Monday. And that could have cost you and your partner millions and, more importantly, it could have landed you both in jail for fraud. My guess is that Billie gave you the weekend to come clean about the scam, before she went public,” I said. “And that’s when you two degenerates decided she had to die.”
The old man looked at both our faces, his mouth twisted into a disgusted grimace. “Who would have figured they’d have cameras in a gawd-damn Mexican restaurant,” he said, spitting out the words. “What’s this world coming to when you can’t even eat refried beans and tortillas in private?”
Two hours later, David and I finished typing Clayton Wagner’s statement at my office on the 610 Loop. The old man had signed a confession that said he and Ty Dickson approached Grant Roberts with the plan and then paid him half a million dollars to murder Billie Cox. He described the money as chicken feed compared to what they planned to make selling the oil field and Century Oil. Two wrinkled old men worried about a lifetime of cashing in without giving back, they were willing to commit murder to have their names on a hospital façade, as insurance that they’d be remembered after their deaths. Unlike Dickens’s Scrooge, they wouldn’t be visited by the ghost of Christmas future and given the opportunity to repent to change their destinies. They’d sealed their own fates, and I doubted that either would leave prison upright.
Wagner’s signed statement in hand, I dispatched two deputies to pick up Dickson at his home and to bring him downtown for booking. Then I called H.P.D. and requested two squads at the Roberts’s house to back us up when David and I made the third arrest of the night. As we drove through Houston’s darkened streets, I dreaded telling Faith that the murderer she’d pushed us to find was her own husband. Still, it was the truth, and although the truth could be cruel, in my experience it was pretty much always
better than living a lie. Not that I was against the small white lies. Sometimes those came in handy.
“What did you have rolled up in the paper?” David asked. “We both know they wouldn’t let you check Cox’s bedroom rug out of the evidence room to haul around Houston to intimidate suspects.”
“A horse blanket,” I said. “I was kind of worried Wagner would be able to smell it, but figured he’d be too nervous to notice.”
“And the surveillance DVD? That was a fake as well, I gather?”
“Blank,” I said. “Clean as the day it came off the assembly line.”
“What would you have done if that old man had taken your challenge and popped it in a DVD player?” David said. He was shaking his head and grinning.
“That, Agent Garrity, didn’t happen,” I said, smugly. “So, you’ll never know.”
A
s much as I dreaded upending Faith Roberts’s world more than it had been by her sister’s death, I stood front and center with David and two uniformed officers at her front door. I’d posted two more at the back door, to block any escape attempt. Serving warrants in the middle of the night is a traditional police tactic; catching the bad guys at home, preferably groggy from sleep, makes the arrest easier. Most of the time, it works.
I knocked, and a few minutes passed before Faith edged the door open.
“Lieutenant?” she said, startled to see me. “Is something wrong?”
“Is your husband here?” I asked.
She nodded. “Upstairs.”
“Which room?” I asked.
She looked at me questioningly, but said, “First door on the right.”
The uniformed officers quickly brushed past, on their way to make the arrest.
“What’s this all about?” she asked, wary. “What do you want with Grant?”
“We have a warrant for his arrest,” I explained. “I’m sorry, Faith. I know this is hard, but he’s been charged with Billie’s murder. We have a signed statement from Clayton Wagner, the head of Century Oil, confessing that he and his partner, Ty Dickson, paid Grant five hundred thousand to murder Billie.”
“Paid him? Why?” she asked.
“To cover up an oil field scam,” David said.
“But why Grant? Why would he do it?”
“Because you’d inherit Billie’s money, which meant he would inherit her money, and because he was furious at Billie. They had an affair,” I said. “Billie dumped him.”
For just a moment, Faith appeared confused, pressing her palm to her forehead as if attempting to quell the rush of thoughts and emotions that flooded through her. “I don’t understand. Not Grant, he wouldn’t—”
Just then, a door opened upstairs followed by sounds of a scuffle and the thud of a body slammed against a wall. On instinct, I pushed Faith out of the entryway, into a small paneled study, and motioned for her to hide behind an oversized desk, while I pulled out my .45 and hid behind one of the room’s French doors. Hearing, undoubtedly, what I’d heard, David silently retreated, backing up into the living room, out of eyesight of the staircase, as heavy footsteps above us creaked floorboards beneath the worn carpeting.
My eyes on two sets of descending legs, I didn’t notice Faith stand up behind me.
“Grant, stop this nonsense,” Faith shouted, as she attempted to push past me toward the staircase. “This is obviously some kind of mistake.”
From above us, the parade of legs grew closer, one following the
other down the staircase. “Sure, Faith,” Roberts said, with a short laugh. “You’ll fix it, just like you’ve tried to fix everything in our marriage. You’ll fix it like you tried to fix me, and even Billie. See how well that worked?”
“I don’t understand,” she cried out, as I shoved her hard toward her hiding place. “The lieutenant says you murdered Billie. Grant, you couldn’t have. You wouldn’t have hurt her.”
“I should have known that damn ranger was here,” Roberts said, seething.
Pushing harder against her, Faith at first fought me, but then I caught the first glimmer of understanding in her eyes, the first resignation that perhaps what I’d told her was true. This time, when I urged her back down, Faith hesitated, but then did as instructed.
With no good cover in the living room, David stood off to the side, his gun drawn and targeted on the stairs. On the staircase, the legs grew longer, the first two in blue uniform slacks, followed by two barefoot and wearing blue-and-white-striped pajama bottoms.
“I know you’re here, Lieutenant,” Roberts shouted as he pushed the young cop forward. “Come out so I can see you before I pull the trigger and kill this poor cop.”
David shook his head. My impulse was to agree, until I saw the terrified kid in the cop uniform. Roberts had him by the collar, with a Glock pressed to the back of his head.
“So, what do we do now?” I said, as I stepped forward, pointing my gun at Roberts.
“You’re going to put your gun down,” he said. “Now. On the floor. Then stand up and back away, so I can get out that door.”
I smiled. “I don’t think so,” I said. “In fact, I know that’s not going to happen.”
“If you don’t, I’ll kill this cop,” he said. “I’ll pull the trigger. I promise you, I will!”
“That’s not going to happen, either,” I said, being careful not to
look at David, not wanting to blow his cover. “You’re a smart guy, Mr. Roberts. Smart enough to realize that a dead hostage isn’t any good to you.”
The uniformed cop looked ready to argue the point. His stark blue eyes were bulging, and his face was drained a deathly white. I might have been sure Roberts wouldn’t fire, but his hostage obviously had doubts.
Appearing not to know what to do, Roberts stopped on the stairway, on the second from the last step, and peered at me, as David came out of hiding, his pistol aimed at the back of Grant Roberts’s skull.
Our suspect did a head swivel, sizing up David then back to me. “This gets more complicated all the time, doesn’t it?” I said. “You really need to put that gun down.”
Furious, Roberts shook his head. “Not a chance,” he said. “I’m not going to prison. Won’t happen. I’ll kill this cop if I have to.”
“That officer is all that’s keeping you alive,” David warned. “You kill him, and I fire. Of course, that would be poetic justice. You’ll end your life the way you killed Billie Cox. The last thing you’ll feel is a bullet slicing through your brain.”
“Guess they didn’t cover effective hostage taking in real estate school?” I said, staring him down. “Time to admit this isn’t your area of expertise and move on. Better to face a murder charge than die.”
For moments, Roberts stood on the steps with his gun pressed against the young officer’s head, most likely playing through possible scenarios in his mind, like a chess player not yet ready to admit he’s been checkmated. Finally, he must have realized he had no way out. Letting go of the kid cop, who fell forward on legs weakened by fear, Roberts turned the gun around, and held it toward me by the barrel. I grabbed it, as David pulled him down off the final step. Before he barreled up the stairs to check on his partner, the kid cop threw David a pair of handcuffs.
“There’s a business card in my wallet. A lawyer, the best criminal guy in town. I’ve already retained his services. He’s expensive, but worth the money. Call him, Faith,” Roberts ordered, as David ratcheted the cuffs tight around his wrists. “You’ll have Billie’s money once the estate is settled. We can afford someone good.”