Final Analysis - Catherine Crier [18]
He noticed that Susan did not react to his pronouncement. She sat on the bench and said nothing. At one point, he removed her handcuffs and asked that she sign a consent form to search all four buildings on the property, which she did without hesitation.
It was after 11 PM when Officer Kelly escorted Susan Polk to the Field Operations Bureau in Martinez.
“Where is my son?” Susan asked repeatedly during the twenty-minute ride to Martinez. “Is he okay?”
Officer Kelly did not know the answer.
“Are you sure it’s my husband?” Susan prodded. “Did my son identify the body? Because his car isn’t here,” referring to Felix’s 1999 Saab.
Officers securing the Miner Road house had located four cars during their initial search of the property, but the Saab was not among them.
“Are you comfortable?” Officer Kelly inquired, thinking about the patrol car’s temperature, not the handcuffs around Susan’s wrists.
“I’m not too comfortable being in the back of a police car,” Susan responded. “My husband was killed, and I didn’t do anything.”
“Excuse me, do you have a blanket, or a jacket or something?” Susan asked Detective Mike Costa as he entered the sterile interrogation room some time after midnight on October 15. Dressed in shorts and a polo shirt, Susan felt chilled in the small, air-conditioned room, and Costa offered her an official police jacket.
The stocky, mustached detective had introduced himself to Susan earlier in the night at the crime scene, where he had been assigned lead investigator status. He had been on the force for twenty-six years and had responded to more than a hundred homicides since joining the Criminal Investigations Division. Now, having been briefed about Susan’s arrest and her statements to police while in route to the field operations office, he was prepared to question her.
“Okay. Like I said at the house, Susan, my name is Mike,” the investigator began, taking a seat at the room’s small round table. “I’m a detective with the Sheriff ’s Office, okay? We are going to be looking at what happened to your husband tonight. I assume it’s your husband in the…what you guys call the pool house out there.”
“The guesthouse,” Susan corrected, wrapping the jacket with the official police emblem around her shoulders. “I didn’t hear any shots. I don’t own a firearm right now.”
“Okay, because you’re in custody here, and you’re not under arrest. I want you to understand that. But you’re not free to leave, okay. The law says I have to admonish you of your rights, okay.”
“Uh, huh.”
“Do you want to talk to me about what happened?”
“I do, and I am very, very tired,” Susan told the detective, unaware that she was being secretly recorded by a camera hidden in the ceiling.
“So am I. I haven’t been to bed all day either, but we have to do this.”
Susan looked directly at the officer. “What did happen?”
“Well, that’s what I’m hoping you can tell me.”
“I did not hear any gunshots, and I do not own a firearm.”
“Okay, you’ve been occupying the main house.”
“I didn’t see him all day today, so I don’t know.”
“Okay, what time did you wake up today?” the detective inquired.
“I woke up at around seven.”
“Seven AM, this morning?”
“Uh, huh. I took my son to school.”
“Which son?”
“Gabe.” Susan said, as she began retracing her steps during the day. She busied herself with housework and cooking after picking Gabe up from school on Monday afternoon. Around 8:30 that night, she took a bath.
“And during this time, didn’t you wonder where Felix was?”
“Yeah, I did wonder,” she replied dryly. “In fact,