She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [146]
Wetzel had been glad the Beard case was Bill Mange’s problem. “No fun to get your butt kicked with the world watching,” she says. But now it was hers.
That same afternoon, she met with her boss, who looked at her schedule and decided there’d be no time for the other cases crowding it, even a capital murder trial of a woman who’d killed her own child. Those were handed out to others on the staff. Moving the case files from Bill Mange’s office to hers—enough to have filled two pickup trucks—convinced her that had been a good decision.
Still, until she sat down with Jennifer and Kristina, the case felt foreign to Wetzel. In them, she saw the small victims she’d come to know so well, bowed by years of parental abuse. The girls didn’t want to testify against their mother. They were frightened. That was something Wetzel understood. She’d had young victims crawl under a witness stand to get away from an abusive parent’s gaze. “We’re going to take this one step at a time,” she told them. “There’s one big thing to remember here: You’re not trying to put your mother in jail. The state is doing that. You’re just telling the truth.”
Over the following days, Wetzel interviewed other witnesses, from Amy Cozart, the twins’ friend who’d been with Jennifer at the lake house the night of the shooting, to David Kuperman, Steve’s attorney. The interview that most concerned her was the one she had with Tracey Tarlton at the Del Valle jail. Wetzel had already read her statement. Much of it seemed hard to believe; yet the evidence suggested she was telling the truth. As Tracey talked, Wetzel sized her up. Cases based on accomplice testimony are difficult. Most often the accomplices are poorly educated and have records that undermine their credibility. Tracey didn’t fit that mold. Instead, Wetzel was impressed by her intelligence, and, despite her psychiatric history, Tracey didn’t appear the least bit crazy.
“Why are you testifying against Celeste?” Wetzel asked.
“I understand that I shot Steve and I deserve prison,” Tracey said. “But I’m not the only one who does. I want to explain why I did what I did.”
Wetzel left the jail that day relieved, and more hopeful than when she’d arrived. Maybe I can do this, she thought. It just might work.
At night, she cooked her family dinner, then curled up with Timberlawn records instead of a good novel. In the end, they were as fascinating, offering insight into what went on behind the institution’s locked doors. In the office, during the day, she combed through financial records. A pattern emerged. Celeste’s flagrant spending, she reasoned, showed motive. By the time Wetzel perused the phone records, she felt even more confident. It was easy to see that Celeste hadn’t cut off contact with Tracey after the shooting; the women had talked often even after Steve’s death.
“Why don’t we put those in a more usable format,” Sergeant Debra Smith, who with Sergeant Dawn McLean, transported Tracey to and from the jail for conferences, mentioned one day. “We can put the financials and phone records on spread sheets and draw up summaries.”
Wetzel had an undergraduate degree in business, but the thought had never occurred to her. Smith, a no-nonsense woman with short dark hair and glasses, however, was a former auditor who worked as an investigator in the D.A.’s White Collar Crime Unit. With a master’s degree in criminal justice management, she was an expert at honing complicated records into a form a jury would understand.
“Go for it,” Wetzel said, glad to have Smith take over the task. She had more pressing problems: DeGuerin had filed a motion asking an appellate court to lower Celeste’s bail.