She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [143]
In February, as Tracey’s trial approached, Maguire and Kinard met with Mange again. This time they were ready to deal. In Del Valle, Tracey had told them she was willing to talk. In fact, she said whether or not they worked out a deal, she wanted to tell Mange everything, including Celeste’s role in the murder. With an eager client, they didn’t dance around the issue. This time they floated only one hypothetical scenario for Tracey’s testimony. Mange was interested. From what he heard, it fit the evidence. With something concrete, the bargaining began. Still, they were worlds apart. Mange wanted Tracey to serve forty years, while Maguire pushed for probation. Gradually, they came to a compromise: Tracey would plead guilty to Steve Beard’s murder and serve twenty years. But before it was set in stone, Mange needed to hear from her what she had to say.
“We’ll talk to our client and get back with you,” Maguire told him.
That afternoon Mange called Paul Beard in Virginia. “Are you willing to plea out Tracey Tarlton on a reduced sentence to get Celeste?” he asked.
“Yes,” Paul said. “Tracey was a pawn. We want Celeste.”
“Okay,” Mange said.
The following day Kinard called Mange. “You’ve got a deal,” he said.
In late March, a week before her trial date, Mange, Kinard, and Maguire all traveled to Del Valle for the debriefing. There, in one of the rooms reserved for attorneys and their clients, over a period of four hours, Tracey talked. She started with the first day she met Celeste at St. David’s and went through to the night of the shooting and their confrontation in Celeste’s driveway the June after Steve died, when Celeste had told her she wanted nothing more to do with her. Then Mange brought out photos of the crime scene and an architect’s diagram of the house he’d gotten from Gus Voelzel.
“Show me how you entered and left the house,” he asked.
Using her finger to trace her path, she talked him through that night, telling how Celeste had done a walk-through with her, then changed it, having her drive up to the back of the house and enter through a door off the pool. While she talked, Mange assessed her. Her intelligence surprised him. It was rare that he’d run across a defendant so bright and articulate. On the witness stand, she’d be powerful. More important, everything she told him matched the physical evidence. It all rang true.
When they parted that day, Mange told the defense attorneys he believed they had a deal. “Now we just need to make sure your client isn’t lying.”
Mange hadn’t talked to Wines about the case in more than a year, but that afternoon he called the detective. As angry as he was about the way Wines had investigated the case, he was the lead detective and Mange felt stuck with him. “We’re taking Tracey to DPS for a polygraph tomorrow,” he told him. “I’d like you to be there.”
On March 28, four days before her trial date, Tracey was transported to the Texas Department of Public Safety office for a polygraph. Mange and Wines, with Maguire and Kinard, watched from behind smoked glass. She stared up at the window often. She knows we’re here, Mange thought.
For three hours the examiner shot her questions, at first those with verifiable answers—like what’s your name, your birthdate, what month is this? Then he honed in on Celeste and on Steve’s murder. Before he finished and tabulated the results, the examiner stuck his head into the room where Mange and Wines waited.
“This looks really good,” he said. “I think she’s telling the truth.”
Mange smiled at Wines. “Go get your warrant,” he said. “And find Celeste Beard.”
“I already know where she is,” Wines told