by Dave Daren
“Julianna Spencer?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “No one believes me, and I’m willing to testify in court.”
“You are saying,” I motioned toward the camera, “that you killed Beowulf Vandergarten?”
“Yes,” she said and looked directly at the camera. “I did.”
I nodded, not quite sure what to make of this. It was all so emotionless. I had dealt with murder confessions, and the suspect is usually so consumed with guilt that they are very emotional. Unless I was dealing with a true sociopath, there was something fishy about this. I could see now why the police and prosecution had a difficult time with her confession.
“Tell me what happened,” I said.
“Well,” she said. “The night of the murder, I was at the performance hall to protest the group. I felt very strongly about their content and showed up with my activist group to protest the performance.”
“Right,” I said as I narrowed my eyes at her robotic tone. Her words were too carefully chosen and sounded well-rehearsed. “There is quite a bit of video footage of you on that night.”
“I felt very angry that I wasn’t being taken seriously,” she said. “I felt that the group represented everything that is wrong with the way women are treated.”
“You made your position quite clear that night,” I said, and I tried to wrap my head around what she was telling me, with what I knew of her secret deeds with John Malone. But, I wanted to get her full murder confession out of the way before I deflated its premise.
“Tell me about the crime itself,” I prodded.
I wasn’t going to sit here and listen to her ramble on about her conflicting feminist ideology.
She looked down at the table and then took a deep breath. “I snuck backstage to confront the dancers. I thought if I could get them to listen to me, I could stop the performance.”
“How did you get backstage?” I asked.
“I snuck in through a window,” she said.
“Which window?” I asked.
“One of the ones in the dressing rooms,” she replied.
“Which dressing room?” I responded.
“I don’t know how to describe it,” she said. “But, it was where one of the girls was.”
“Which girl?” I asked.
“Her name was... Olivia... I think?”
I chuckled. And we uncover two lies in one. She knew Olivia very well, and there was only one dressing room with a window, and it was the one Beowulf was in. I cleared my throat and texted AJ in the other room. Did we ever get the floor plans for the PAH?
“Had you ever seen Olivia before?” I asked Judith.
“No,” she said.
“To clarify, you had never met her, talked to her, seen her...” I clarified.
“No,” she said. “I had never seen her before in my life. I just wanted to talk to her about what she was doing, degrading herself for the sake of art, it’s just--”
“Yeah,” I interrupted. “So you snuck into Olivia’s dressing room, through the window. What was she doing when you got there?”
AJ texted me back. Yes. I downloaded them. I have them in my research files.
“She was... doing her hair,” Judith said.
“Was she alone?” I asked.
Can you bring them in here? I texted AJ.
“Yes, she was alone,” Judith said.
“You snuck into Olivia’s dressing room, through the window, and she was alone doing her hair?” I repeated her details back to her.
Judith shifted in her seat. “Yes, that’s what I said.”
“Is that what you said, or is that what happened?” I asked.
AJ popped in, and I grabbed the papers out of her hand. I quickly smiled at her, and she left.
“That’s what happened,” Judith insisted.
I looked over the floorplans and tried to find the backstage view.
“Go on,” I said. “What happened once you got into Olivia’s dressing room?”
“I tried to talk to her about what she was doing, and tried to explain that she could have a better life outside of what she was doing,” Judith said.
“And how did she respond?” I asked.
“She left the room,” she said. “I assumed she planned to alert security, so I saw these cans of green paint sitting in the dressing room. And I’m not proud of what I did next, but I lost my temper and began tossing the paint at the dancers.”
And that’s the thing she wasn’t proud of?
“Was this before or after the show?” I asked.
I already knew the answer to this, but I wanted to line up the details in her story.
“Before,” she said.
“But the murder occured after the performance,” I reminded her.
“Yes,” she said. “Security escorted me out of the building and threatened to have me arrested, so I left peacefully. I’m not a violent person, so I didn’t want to cause any trouble.”
“You’re not?” I asked. “But you’re here to confess to a murder.”
She shook her head as if in recall. “Right. But that was later.”
“When?” I asked.
“After the performance,” she said. “I snuck backstage again.”
“How?” I asked.
She smiled ruefully. “Well, I’m not proud of this... but… I... flashed a security guard so he would let me through.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You degraded yourself?”
No wonder the police found her testimony not credible.
“Like I said, I’m not proud of it,” she said. “And I was very upset, and so I resorted to desperate means to get my message across.”
“Okay,” I said. “The security guard let you through. So then what happened?”
“I encountered Beowulf in the hall,” she said. “And I started yelling and screaming, and he alerted security and went into his dressing room, but I followed him. I got into his dressing room, and then I blacked out. I don’t remember what happened then. But, I just remember standing over him, and realizing that I had killed him, and then I ran away in fear.”
“So, you don’t remember the exact details of the criminal act?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “I was very emotional.”
“Can I ask you, Ms. Klein, are you on any medications?” I asked.
“No,” she said.
“Have you ever been under the care of a psychiatrist?” I asked.
“No, nothing like that. I killed him, I did!” she insisted, and her brow furrowed in frustration.
“Why was Senator Malone outside?” I asked.
“Senator Malone?” she answered. “He wasn’t there.”
“You told Vicki he was,” I said.
“No,” she said. “I’ve never met Senator Malone.”
“You have never met Senator John Malone?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “I’ve seen him on television, but that’s all I know about him.”
“Who owns Kat Studios?” I asked.
“I do,” she said.
“Who gave you the money?” I asked.
“It was my money,” she said.
“Who is Jack Winslow?” I asked.
She looked at me fearfully, and then I saw her throat move as she swallowed.
“He was an old employee of mine,” she said.
“How long did he work for you?” I asked.
“A few months,” she said.
“Why did he leave?” I asked.
“That’s his business,” she said.
“Fair enough,” I said. “But I think you know what I’m getting at.”
She fingered the rim of the table.
“You want to tell me you never met Olivia before the night of the murder?” I asked. “And you want to tell me you have never met Senator Malone?”
Then I slapped the floorplans on the table. “And you want me to believe you snuck in through the window of this dressing room?”
She looked at me like a de
er caught in the headlights and at the camera and then cried out, “I killed him! I killed him! What does it matter all of the details? Isn’t that enough?”
“Why is it so important that someone believe you?” I asked.
“Because,” she shouted. “I need the money!”
I recoiled in shock and the words hung in the air for the better part of a minute.
“What money?” I asked.
Her face deflated, and she looked tired and sad. Now, this was the way criminals looked when they confess.
“A man called me a couple of days after the murder,” she said, “I don’t know who he was or why. But, he said that if I confessed he would give my family half a million dollars for my son to go through school. He’s a smart kid. He’s nine, now, and he’s... I think he really might be one of those whiz kids, you know? He has read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica twice. You can ask him about anything, and he knows. I want him to go to the best schools in the world, private schools, best colleges. And this man, he offered me money if I would confess.”
“But you would spend your life in prison,” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “But my sister agreed to raise my son for me, and I figured if I did it this way, I could give him the life I could never give him on my own.”
“And you don’t know who this man is?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I only talked to him on the phone. He gave me ten thousand for confessing, and then I get more when the trial begins, and the rest when I go to jail.”
“Well,” I said. “That’s a pretty messed up deal to make.”
She burst into tears. “I know. But it seemed to make sense at the time.”
“I think you know who he is,” I said.
“I don’t,” she said. “He only sent a man that works for him to bring the money. And I had never seen him before or after.”
“You’ve invalidated the deal,” I said. “Because we can’t let you confess now.”
“I know,” she said. “And I feel so much better now. But he will come after me.”
“You need to go to the police, tell them everything you just told me,” I said. “They will protect you. But, I have to turn this recording over to them.”
She nodded and looked frightened. “I understand.”
“Would you like me to call them and have them escort you over there?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “I can manage on my own. It’s better this way.”
She rose and left the room, and then I heard her leave the office not long after. Landon and I looked at each other.
“Whoa,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “This just got real.”
“It tends to do that around here,” I said.
I left the conference room and opened my laptop and tried to type up the development for our case file. I rubbed my face and collapsed into my chair.
“Who was Judith protecting?” AJ asked.
“Senator Malone,” I said. “Because of Olivia.”
“Why because of Olivia?” she said.
“Because Judith knew about her,” I said.
“But why would that cause Malone to pay her off?” she asked.
“We don’t know for a fact that Malone paid her off,” I answered.
“Then who did?” she asked.
“That’s the final question,” I said. “If we knew that, we could solve the case.”
The question hung in the air for the better part of the afternoon. I needed Vicki to process with, and with her in Phoenix, I felt crippled. I didn’t see Vicki until I got home that night. She came back from Phoenix late, albeit with a bag of sushi takeout.
“I come bearing gifts,” she said as she walked through the door, her hands full of bags.
“Ah,” I said. “Sushi.”
“Fifth Street Bistro,” she winked.
“Missed you,” I said.
“Me or food?” she teased.
“Both,” I said.
She laughed and produced a bottle of champagne.
“Victory drink,” she declared as she held the bottle high.
“You won your case already?” I asked.
“Close,” she said as she fished around in the kitchen for a corkscrew. I eased onto a barstool and unpacked the food bags.
“Come on,” I said. “Tell me what happened.”
“Well,” she began as she dug the corkscrew into the bottle, “the judge set a trial date for two years from now.”
“Two years?” I said. “How is that a victory?”
“Because,” she stopped and leaned forward against the counter, her eyes bright, “in the meantime, Elena gets a temporary visa.”
“So,” I said, “for the next two years, she’s legal?”
“Yep,” she said, and popped open the champagne.
“Congratulations, Vic, that’s a big deal,” I said.
“I know,” she smiled and poured us glasses.
“To winning,” I toasted.
“To winning,” she repeated.
“So,” she took a sip, sat on the stool next to me, and crossed her legs. “How did it go back here today?”
I laughed. “It was... interesting.”
“Yeah,” she said. “AJ sent me an odd text.”
“Odd was definitely the name of the game today,” I said.
“Judith?” she guessed.
I took another sip of champagne and nodded. I opened boxes of California sushi and rice and dug in.
“Piece of work,” I said.
“Between you and AJ,” she said. “This story is really starting to sound mysterious.”
We both laughed, and she opened a container of teriyaki chicken. She looked beautiful, sitting on the barstool, prim and poised, with her dark hair pinned up and slightly disheveled from a long day.
Tonight, she wore a black pantsuit with a pink blouse and high fashion boots, and when she spoke, she occasionally clicked her acrylic fingernails together, and something about the sound was soft and feminine. Even the way she ate, had a graceful manner to it, dainty and deliberate.
“What?” she raised her eyebrows at me.
I shook my head as I must have been staring.
“Nothing,” I sighed. “Yeah, so Judith came in, and we have it all on tape.”
“Did she confess again?” she asked.
“She tried,” I said. “But I busted her. She pretended she didn’t know Malone, or Olivia.”
“Really?” she chortled. “She thought she could get away with that? Is she on drugs?”
“You know, I asked her that,” I chuckled.
“You did not!” she laughed. “Seriously?”
I nodded, and we both laughed harder.
“She insisted she wasn’t,” I said. “But, then eventually, she told me that she only confessed because an unidentified man offered her half a million to take the fall.”
“What’s she going to do with half a million in prison?” she asked. “That’s a lot of commissary bucks.”
“No,” I said. “She’s got a genius son. He reads encyclopedias.”
“Sounds like my house,” she muttered. “My mom would make us read encyclopedias.”
“No, he reads them for fun,” I said.
“How old is this kid?” she asked.
“Nine,” I said. “So, the money was to send this kid to snooty private schools and universities.”
“But with a mother in prison,” she said.
“Right,” I said. “She figured he could do better with a lot of money than with her.”
“That’s a load of crock,” she said. “But then again, if that’s what she thinks, then maybe she’s that shitty of a mother, and she’s right.”
“Either way,” I said. “It’s moot. We told her to confess to the cops, and Landon will turn the tape over to them.”
“And you think she will?” Vicki raised an eyebrow.
“Doesn’t matter if she does or doesn’t, really,” I shrugged.
&nb
sp; “So,” she began, “who is this unidentified man?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I’ll bet he’s connected to Malone.”
“What if he’s not?” she asked. “What if he’s connected to the killer?”
I rubbed my face. “I think I’ve about had it with hypothetical questions for a while. They all end the same, with more questions.”
She laughed. “Okay, so on to other subjects-- land.”
“Land?” I repeated.
“For the house,” she said. “I think I might have found a place.”
“This quickly?” I asked.
“It’s an idea,” she said. “It’s a plot near the lake. I think you might like it.”
“Who owns it?” I asked.
“Currently Andrea McClellan,” she said. “But as soon as she bought it, she became mayor and never got a chance to develop it. Now, she and her husband are selling it for dirt cheap.”
“That sounds promising,” I said. “So you’ve seen it?”
“I drove by it on the way home,” she said. “It could really be something. But I had a long talk today with Andrea about it.”
“You talked to the mayor?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “We go to the same nail salon, and we’ve run into each other there a couple of times. Nice lady, down to earth.”
“How did I not know this?” I asked.
“It wasn’t a big deal,” she said. “Just some small talk. She’s on my Facebook now. She comments sometimes.”
“Really?” I asked. “The mayor comments on your Facebook? What does she say?”
“It’s not a big deal,” she said. “I really like her, and she’s not all that much older than us, late thirties, I think. If she was a normal person that could have a normal life, I would be friends with her.”
“Okay,” I said. “Because that’s so not freaking me out.”
“So you can be friends with the guy that owns all the media in Arizona,” she said, “but when I befriend the mayor on Facebook, that weirds you out?”
I laughed. “I guess when you put it that way.”
“Hey,” she said. “We’re a team. What’s good for you is good for me.”
“Right,” I smiled. “We’re a team.”
“Anyway,” she continued, “back to the land. Andrea was a realtor before she was the mayor, and so I messaged her and told her we were looking for land, and asked if she had any recommendations on who to contact.”
