To Die For (27 page)

Greco listened.

“I just want you to know, if you ever need a job in Nevada, just let me know.”

THURSDAY, MARCH 17, 1:30 P.M.

The new, modern-looking Robert Presley Detention Center in downtown Riverside doesn't even look like a jail. Its smooth, sculpted concrete curves and lines resemble an attractive office building instead of housing for hundreds of inmates. The telltale difference is that there is very little foot traffic through the front doors. Prisoners enter the building through a secure rear entrance and the guards, all sheriff's deputies and a few civilian employees of the sheriff's department have a separate, secure entrance. Inmates are transported to and from the nearby courthouses via underground tunnels to reduce the potential for escape. Very few people ever enter by the front door except on visiting days, when the lines of mostly women and squalling children line up for hours to visit their husbands, boyfriends, sons, nephews and fathers. The inmate receiving center processes upwards of 100 men and women a day. Some are just getting arrested and others are being released after spending a weekend, a few days, a few months or a few years inside. They get interviewed by the staff about gang affiliation, sexual orientation and experience in the jail system to determine where they will be housed. All inmates are screened by medical personnel, and by psychiactric personnel if they're suicidal, clearly psychotic or schizophrenic. Their housing can be determined by type of offense, sexual orientation or gang affiliation alone. Members of known rival gangs are not housed together. Male transvestites are housed separately from the rest of the male inmate population. High-profile, violent offenders will not be housed with an inmate arrested over the weekend on a traffic warrant.

It takes a couple of hours for deputies to process each inmate through the jail's receiving center. Dana, like the other women in her holding tank, had removed her “civilian” clothing, shoes and underwear and was physically searched and given jail-issue underwear, a blue jumpsuit with “RCJ”—for Riverside County Jail—stamped in huge black letters on the back, and brown plastic sandals. Her clothes would be stored either until her release or until they were retrieved by a relative. Greco had already taken her earrings as evidence. Dana was taken from the holding tank and again fingerprinted, photographed and formally booked, having to spell her name, her date of birth and other vital information. Dana was assigned a booking number—#9408779—and placed in a holding cell while a clerk ran her name and fingerprints through separate state and national law enforcement databases to determine if she had any other wants, holds or warrants for her arrest. A deputy asked her questions about her gang affiliation, sexual orientation and experience in the jail system. He took a look at the murder charge and determined that she should be housed in protective custody, with other women who do not mix with the rest of the inmate population, and sent her to medical screening.

A nurse took her blood pressure, her temperature and pulse. Dana told the nurse her height was five feet, two inches and her weight was 136 pounds. She told the nurse about a dog bite to her hand the previous July and that she'd had four miscarriages, two more than she'd told her friends, her husband, her boyfriend and her father. She denied having problems with seizures, heart problems, TB, diabetes, hepatitis and AIDS. She answered “no” when asked about crabs, lice and venereal diseases. She was experiencing menses at that time and asked for an ob-gyn exam due to menstrul pain as well as a mammogram. She admitted drinking two alcoholic drinks a day. She complained of weakness, lethargy, weight loss, night sweats, loss of appetite, and chronic diarrhea after “slowing down on drinking,” claiming that her “symptoms have increased since incarceration. Wants vegetarian diet.” She said she was suicidal and wanted to see a counselor.

Dana was handed a bedroll consisting of a gray wool blanket, two white sheets, a towel, a pillowcase and a small cardboard box, known as a “welfare pack,” containing a toothbrush, toothpaste, soap and a razor. A second empty cardboard box was to be used to store her own belongings: books, magazines, mail, pencils and personal hygiene items. Dana was probably the only inmate at the county jail who'd traveled to Germany and Sweden, windsurfed in Australia and New Zealand, partied in New Orleans, gone to Hawaii three times a year to sail and play golf, had pedicures religiously every month and was so meticulous about her hair that she never let her roots show. Dana didn't find any shampoo in the welfare pack. One of the guards told her that if she didn't have money on her books to buy shampoo from the commissary, she could use soap, and she was shown to her new home, a concrete cinderblock cell.

Dana was hungry, having not eaten since lunch the day before. She hungrily eyed the trustee, in a white jumpsuit, making the rounds with food trays stacked on a cart. The trustee shoved the tray through the horizontal slot. Dana took one look at the tray and shoved it back.

“This is moldy!” she said to the trustee. “What is this, some kind of microwave crap? I'm not going to eat this! Can't you give me something else!”

The trustee gave her a blank stare.

THURSDAY, MARCH 17, 2:57 P.M.

The criminalists were going through Dana's Cadillac at the impound yard, listing the evidence they were removing. They took photos of the interior, the exterior and the tire tread. Strands of hair were removed from the driver's seat, the seat belt, the head rest, handwritten directions, a pager from the front passenger floor, a cassette labeled “Dana's tape,” a box of latex surgical gloves and a variety of lengths of rope from under the rear driver's side floor mat, a bath towel, three boxes of women's hair coloring—in blonde and brown—and a Von's receipt.

The trunk held some interesting items: a black plastic bag containing fossil bones, legal divorce paperwork involving Tom Gray, and an assortment of ropes and straps. The last thing the criminalists did was cut out a sample patch of vinyl material from the front passenger seat.

The criminalists also photographed and took material from the front bench seat of Jim's truck. They confiscated hairs and fibers from inside the car and from the floor mats as well as some ropes from the small compartment under the driver's seat.

THURSDAY, MARCH 17, 6:20 P.M.

Dana recited her history to the intake psychologist: four miscarriages, divorce, fired from her nursing job just before Thanksgiving. She had gone to marriage counseling during the divorce last year, but that was it. She told the counselor she was very fearful, depressed, distraught and unable to cope. She said she had experienced suicidal thoughts during the last several months. She admitted a history of alcohol-abuse as well as marijuana and cocaine use. She said she was on anti-depressant medication.

The psychologist noted that she was oriented as to time and place, was not delusional, and was not experiencing hallucinations. Dana said she was not suicidal at that moment, but the counselor decided to take precautions anyway and place her on observation status. She would be briefly interviewed in follow-up exams and evaluated, possibly medicated. She would have one hour of free time out of her cell each day and she'd be locked up the rest of the time. The interview lasted less than 15 minutes.

She was allowed a phone call a few minutes after that. By 8 p.m., she was back in her cell.

FRIDAY, MARCH 18, 6 A.M.

The deputy showed Dana to a holding tank where she would await her arraignment sometime later in the day. They got her up at 4:30 a.m. for transport to court, which was across the street. Dana looked around at her temporary environs.

“Hey!” Dana shouted. “The toilet in here is grossly clogged!

“Hey!”

The deputy was long gone.

FRIDAY, MARCH 18, 11 A.M.

The phone was ringing as soon as he got home.

Tom Gray, his long, narrow legs clad in jeans, raced across the studio to get it.

“Tom, what's Dana's middle name?”

“Why?”

“Just tell me!”

“It's Sue.”

“Oh my God, you're not going to believe this!”

“What's the matter?”

“Well, Dana … Did you see the paper this morning? She's been arrested.”

“What?”

“For murder.”

“What are you talking about? You mean … Dana?”

“Yes, Dana! Can you believe it?”

Tom hung up the phone, stunned. His entire body felt numb, as if he had been struck. It was the weirdest thing he'd ever felt.

He thought,
Are we still married?

FRIDAY, MARCH 18, 1 P.M.

It was Jim again on the phone and he wanted to know when the hell he was getting his truck back. Greco had talked to him the day before—twice. Jim was upset and he had a right to be. Greco sympathized with him: it was a real inconvenience, he said, but some of the store clerks said that Dana had driven away in a dark sport utility vehicle or a dark pick-up truck, and they had to process his car. He told Jim he should have it by Monday at the latest, and that he'd call the criminalists again. They had a lot of evidence to process from four different crime scenes as well as a truckload of evidence from his house. Greco wasn't about to rush them, but he didn't tell Jim that.

He hung up the phone, finding it revealing that every time Jim called about his truck, he never asked about Dana. She'd barely spent two hours in the Perris jail until the watch commander shipped her off to Riverside County Jail. She arrived at the Riverside jail at 5:45 a.m., about two hours after the nurse had taken her blood, saliva and fingernail scrapings. Greco hadn't realized that until he came into work early Thursday afternoon. Her purple dress, her pristine off-white leather Birkenstocks and the contents of her purse were now in a storage locker at the Riverside jail. There was something satisfying about knowing that she was now clad in a baggy blue jail jumpsuit with “RCJ” stamped across the back.

When he saw Julie Bennett, she said she'd taken photos of the front and back of each hand, each side of her forearms as well as full-length shots from the front, back and sides. Julie told Greco that it was unusual to have a murder suspect with manicure-perfect nails. Knowing that Dana had committed a homicide earlier in the day, Julie noticed that Dana hadn't even broken or chipped a nail.

Greco chuckled to himself at this. He also wanted to know how she went shopping in public without blood all over her clothes minutes after committing extremely violent murders. Julie said she was submitting the photos for processing and that they'd be ready next week. Dana's arraignment was scheduled for Monday. He had presented the paperwork involving the murders of Norma and June to the committee of district attorneys on Thursday, but Rich told him they didn't have enough evidence to file charges for Norma's murder. Greco was disappointed, but he knew they were reluctant to file charges until there was more evidence linking Dana to that crime scene. Like the shoeprint. They needed a positive match, and that would take time. Antoniadas had presented his evidence about Dora and Riverside sheriff's detectives had presented evidence regarding the attack on Dorinda. They had filed charges of murder for the June Roberts and Dora Beebe slayings, one count of attempted murder for the attack on Dorinda Hawkins, and a robbery charge for stealing money from Dorinda's purse.

“Hey, have you seen this?”

James McElvain was holding up the front page of the
Press–Enterprise.
Greco scanned the headline: “Nurse, 36, Is Prime Suspect in Three Slayings and Assault.” The front-page story had a map of the region and the locations of the murders, like the pin map that Greco still had up behind his desk. There was a second story quoting neighbors and friends of Dana, including her father-in-law, expressing shock over her arrest.

“Thanks,” he said. He took the newspaper and said he'd read it later.

Greco was curious to know what the papers had said about his case. The reporters had called yesterday, but he'd been buried in reports, then had to rush off to the DA's office to present his case. Not that he shunned the press, he simply didn't have time to talk to them. Even that afternoon, he knew there was a press conference about Dana's arrest scheduled at Canyon Lake. Wyatt would be the center of attention there and that was fine. If Wyatt wanted the glory, he could have it. Wyatt hadn't even asked Greco to go. Greco probably wouldn't have gone anyway, not when he had reports to write. A couple of Perris officers had stopped by his desk to congratulate him on his work and he appreciated that. It chafed at him that none of his supervisors had even said a word to him.

FRIDAY, MARCH 18, 3 P.M.

Why did Dora let Dana into her house?

Why did Dana use an iron?

Did she strangle Dora first and then hit her?

How did Dana choose Dora in the first place?

Antoniadas was sitting on Dora's bed, just thinking. After everyone had cleared the crime scene, he usually returned a day or two later to sit by himself and let everything sink in and let ideas come to him. What he had seen seemed cold and calculating. There was an element of deliberation in the attack: the suspect had grabbed the phone cord ahead of time. But there had also been a bit of spontaneity: she seemed to have grabbed whatever was handy to hit them with. She was a very physical person who overpowered her victims. The attacks were definitely overkill, showing that she was expressing a lot of rage and hostility. This was not about credit cards and bankbooks. When he'd talked to her, he could easily see her doing this. The crime fit her personality. She didn't care about anyone but herself.

He'd attended Dora's autopsy that morning. He'd attended more than 100 autopsies, including a few elderly victims of homicides. The frailty and vulnerability of elderly victims never failed to make an impression on him.