She Wanted It All - Kathryn Casey [95]
“Mr. Beard,” Wines said. “Would it be all right if we ask you some questions?”
In terrible pain, Steve nodded.
“Did you see who did this to you?” he asked.
Steve tried to shake his head no, but the tubes made it impossible. The nurse brought over paper and a pen, but he was too weak to write.
“Mr. Beard, try to communicate by blinking. One for yes, two for no,” Knight said.
Steve blinked once for yes.
“Did you see who did this to you?”
Steve blinked twice for no.
The two officers went through a list of questions that morning, but came away with little. Steve didn’t know who had shot him, but when Tracey’s name came up, he blinked once. Yes, he knew her.
“Do you think this has anything to do with anyone in your family?” Wines asked.
Steve blinked once for yes.
When it appeared the questioning was taking a toll, Wines and Knight turned to leave. For the first time they noticed Celeste, glaring at them through the ICU window with what Wines would later describe as “pure hate.”
Back at Toro Canyon the crime scene unit took over. They didn’t find Steve’s wallet or the thousand dollars Celeste had mentioned. When Sergeant Knight arrived, however, he found something he judged interesting. In the garage were three cars, two Cadillacs and a Ford Suburban. All had car phones, but Celeste’s Cadillac also had a Nokia cell phone in the center counsel. Knight flipped through the recently called numbers and came up with two of special interest: “Tracey cell” and “Tracey home.”
As the police searched, Kristina returned home. Steve’s outlook wasn’t good, and she’d come home to get his identification and insurance information. In the master bathroom, she searched for his wallet. It was gone. She couldn’t find his Baume & Mercier watch, or his sapphire ring. While she rummaged around, Knight walked in.
“I’ve got a few questions,” he told Kristina. “Can we talk?”
As exhausted as she was, Kristina agreed.
At the hospital, Celeste had warned Kristina to be wary of the police, that they could turn things around and make it appear that one of them was involved in the shooting. Now, in response to his questions, Kristina was nervous, trying to remember what her mother had coached her to say. When he asked, she told the lies that Celeste had told her to, that her mother had been home before midnight and that they talked briefly before going to sleep.
“How did your mother seem?” Knight asked.
“Normal,” Kristina answered.
“Is it unusual for her to sleep in your room?”
“She does that sometimes,” Kristina said.
Something had been mentioned to Knight on the scene— that when the police arrived, Celeste was wearing a bra under her nightclothes. “Is that unusual?” he asked.
“No,” Kristina answered. “Mom always does that, because she was abused as a kid.”
Little of interest was taken from the Toro Canyon house during the search that day, nothing beyond the shotgun shell that would yield any clues. From there Knight and Wines returned to their office, where they ran a computer check on Tracey Tarlton that produced a list of addresses. Using information Knight had gleaned from the teenagers, they narrowed the address down to one on Wilson Street, on Austin’s near south side. They also checked Tracey’s car registration and wrote down the license number on her maroon Nissan Pathfinder. Then they checked for weapons permits.
“Here we go!” Wines said when he discovered that Tracey was the owner of a .20 gauge shotgun, the same caliber as the casing found in Steve Beard’s bedroom.
At three that afternoon Knight and Wines drove to the address on Wilson Street and parked in front of the address on Tracey’s driver’s license. The Pathfinder was in the driveway. They walked up to the front door of the unremarkable ranch-style house in the working class neighborhood and Knight knocked.
Tracey answered, as if she’d been waiting for them.
“We’re here to ask a few questions,” Knight said. “Do you know Steven Beard?”
“Sure,” Tracey said. “Celeste’s husband.”