Lorraine said, “OK.”
“We’re just tying up the loose ends,” McPherron told Lorraine. “We’ve got some things to run by and confirm.”
Habib added, “The rule of thumb is you just can’t have too much evidence, you know.”
“I know,” said Lorraine. “We want you to.”
“Where’s Doc?” asked McPherron. “Did he go to the arraignment?”
“He went to the arraignment,” said Lorraine, “and I just assumed that so many of his friends were there that they’re just visiting and whatnot. He’ll be back in a little bit.”
“All right,” said McPherron. “We’ll just—we’ll be down there, if he wants to know.”
Rachelle said to Lorraine, “See ya,” and left the house.
Rachelle got into the back of a patrol car smelling of fast food—Sergeant Habib had made a hamburger run—and the two detectives munched on dinner while driving to the police station.
“We’ve been kind of eating on the fly,” McPherron told Rachelle over his shoulder. “It’s been a busy day, busy couple of days. So, how are you holding up?”
“I’m doing OK,” she said. “I watched about five disks of Family Guy.”
“I guess the memorial service for your mom is Sunday?” said McPherron. Rachelle said it was. “Will I be able to go out tonight?” she asked.
“Well, of course, that’ll be up to your dad,” said the detective. “And depends how long it takes. It may take us a little while to run through this. We’ve got kind of a laundry list of questions to ask you.”
Rachelle groaned.
“Little cooped up, huh?” asked McPherron.
“Yeah,” she said.
“We’ll try not to keep you confined too long.”
As they neared the police station, they talked about movies and television shows, making the same kind of small talk before Rachelle’s previous interview, which had ended with her angry and in tears. Habib shared he liked the Discovery Channel and the History Channel, even though it “drives my wife nuts.” Rachelle said she liked the Princess Bride and the Godfather movies and asked the detectives if they had seen the latest Lord of the Rings film.
“Sad to say, I fell asleep in number three,” said Habib as the cruiser pulled into the back parking lot of the police station.
“It was just too long,” added McPherron. “They needed an intermission or something.”
They got out into the November cold and walked through the back door of the station and down the hall to the same interrogation room. The video camera was turned on. Rachelle was asked if she needed to use the restroom. She said she was fine.
“Good,” said McPherron. “I’m hoping this won’t take long.”
Rachelle yawned. “Pardon me,” she said, explaining the stress of the week had left her tired and not feeling well.
McPherron began.
“Like I said before, there’s a few things that we’ve uncovered, and we need to get some clarification from you,” said McPherron. “You are the one person that could probably help us, given your relationship in all this.”
Rachelle yawned again, then apologized.
“All right,” said McPherron, who also was exhausted. The interview with Jason had gone into the early morning, then he handled the paperwork for Brian to be charged. He was eating the take-out cheeseburger while speaking with Rachelle.
“First of all,” he said. “I’m going to go ahead and read you something here. OK?”
Her read her her Miranda rights. “Do you understand each of these rights as I’ve explained them to you?” he asked, just as they do in cop shows.
No yawn this time. Rachelle answered, “Yeah.”
“Having these rights in mind, do you wish to talk to us now?”
She didn’t answer at first. “Well,” said Rachelle, “I’m curious: Why are you reading this and you never did before?”
“Some things have come up,” said McPherron, “and I just want to make sure you understand what your rights are before we go any further. Do you also understand you have a right to have a parent, your father, present?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Do you want to talk to us? Do you want your dad here?”
“No, I’ll talk to you,” she said. “I’m just curious: Why are you doing that?”
“I’m just trying to be cautious,” said McPherron. “I just want to make sure you understand fully. I mean, you’re not quite an adult, but you’re almost there. You’re here speaking with us voluntarily?”
“Yes.”
“Excuse me,” said McPherron, “I should never try to eat a cheeseburger while I’m talking. I mean, we brought you here, but you’re free to go.”
“Yeah.”
“We’re just in here for privacy’s sake only.”
“I know,” said Rachelle.
It was another ruse. McPherron read Rachelle her rights because he wanted to use anything she said against her in court. The privacy was for his benefit; he didn’t want Rachelle’s father interfering with what was now not going to be an interview but an interrogation.
“You understand,” said McPherron, “Brian was arrested late last night.”
“Yes.”
“He just got done being arraigned. Prior to the arrest, he did talk to us at some length and told us many things about what happened with your mom.”
McPherron asked Rachelle again about her relationship with her mother, their arguments over her interest in Wicca and having sex with her boyfriend Ian, her “venting” to Jason and other friends about abuse by her mother, and why she never reported it.
Rachelle told the detective that her mother had a side the rest of the island never saw.
“It’s, like, you know, people out in the public probably think my mom would never lose her temper, probably think she never cusses or anything,” she said. “But, you know, behind closed doors, other things happen.”
McPherron circled back to Jason and Brian.
“I think Jason still loves you, to be honest. He’s told us so,” the detective said. “And I think he has strong feelings for you. Brian certainly does too. They both care about you and I think they’d do just about anything for you, do about anything you’d ask them to do, including asking them to have your mom killed. Jason’s been arrested. Both Jason and Brian have told us everything about the plot, about your participation in the in the plot.”
It was, of course, untrue. Brian had said it didn’t appear Rachelle knew anything about the murder plot and Jason had portrayed her involvement as minimal. Rachelle started to speak up.
“Just hear me out, OK?” said McPherron. “They told us everything. They told how you came to them about the abuse, how you wanted their help, how you went to Jason first, told him you wanted to get rid of your mom.”
Rachelle tried to say something again.
“Just hear me out,” McPherron repeated. “Let me tell you what they told us. And then you can talk. Jason figured he needed Brian’s help, and that Brian would be the one who would actually do the deed, and Jason would be the helper. But they told us about how this was all planned for months, and about your participation in it. And apparently there’s been a couple other failed attempts or plans that didn’t come to fruition.”
He showed her a piece of paper.
“This is an e-mail we got off of Jason’s computer,” he said.
In fact, it was an e-mail off of Rachelle’s computer that her father had printed out and given to Bob Claus. The e-mail had been sent on Wednesday, September 29, 2004, at 12:34 p.m., to Rachelle’s Narcissa address. It was from Jason.
Subject: Hey Shell
Hi, how goes it, not much going on here today. I went down and found Brian so I could chat at him for a bit. Oh, yeah, and we canceled that hunting trip we were planning for today. But he said he would like to go sometime soon. No later than a week from now if he can swing it, so that should be fun ;).
McPherron asked, “What’s the huntin
g trip?”
“He goes hunting,” said Rachelle defiantly. “I remember this e-mail, but I didn’t—I thought he was just going hunting.”
“He says ‘hunting trip’ was a code word for one of the failed attempts,” said McPherron, “where you were going to have your mom take you to volleyball practice and after she drops you off, Brian was going to be waiting in the woods and shoot her. That was one of the attempts.”
McPherron told her that there were other plans to kill her mother and that she knew about all of them. The burning van was the final successful effort. He told Rachelle that on Sunday when she got home she called Jason and he gave her a report on how the murder went down.
“They told all,” said McPherron.
Speaking in his calm, soft voice, McPherron stared down Rachelle.
“Now, I just want you to understand something,” he said. “There’s a big difference between being the person who actually commits the crime and the people participating in the planning of it. Now, I know you participated in the plan.”
He showed her the e-mail again.
“We have more of these,” he said. “We’ve got your computer, we got Brian’s computer, we’ve got Jason’s computer. And even though you may delete things, the computer still saves it, and we’re able to find things on computers that people think are deleted. We have experts at retrieval.
“We know exactly what happened up there,” he continued. “We know that Jason and Brian killed your mother, that Brian was the one who did the killing. Jason assisted him. But you participated in the planning of the incident. You gave them the information. You approved plans. You let them know basically that you were going to be out of town, that your dad was going to be out of town. You showed them how to get in the house. Brian went in that garage, just as instructed, and he abducted your mother, put her in the van, and took her out, and then Brian ended up killing her. And they drove her up to the end of the road and set her and the vehicle on fire. They’ve told us everything. They’ve given you up, Rachelle.”
The speech brought Rachelle to tears.
“No,” she sobbed, “they offered and I said no. I said I loved her.”
“But you did ask [them] at one time to kill her for you?” asked McPherron.
“I had mentioned it,” she said. “I wasn’t serious. I told them no. I don’t want it done because I loved her.”
For the next hour Rachelle and the detectives went at it. She cried, she lashed out, she revealed some details, denied others. The door was unlocked the whole time and she could have left whenever she wanted, but she never tried to go. She never asked for a lawyer, she never asked for her father. In fact, she worried that her father would find out about what she was saying. When it was over, Rachelle was exhausted and feeling ill, no longer the confident, snide-talking blogger of My Crappy Life but a scared girl.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
One hour into the interrogation, Rachelle began to lose it. Peppered with questions and accusations, she insisted through tears that she never wanted her mother murdered, even though Jason and Brian had offered to do it.
Sergeant Randy McPherron asked, “Why did you tell them that you were going to be gone that weekend?”
“It just came up,” said Rachelle, crying. “It just must have came up in conversation is all.”
“Now, listen, Rachelle,” lectured McPherron, “you need to be straight with me, OK? You’ve tried to lie to me in the past, and it’s failed right? You’ve tried to lie to me in the past and it hasn’t worked, right?”
She didn’t answer.
“Right?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Don’t lie to me now.”
“Yes,” she repeated.
“It’s not going to help you to lie to me.”
“I told them no. I told them no,” she said.
“You’ve got to tell me everything.”
“I told them I didn’t want it to happen.”
“When did you tell them that?”
“I told them a while ago.”
“What’s ‘a while’?”
“It was weeks ago. Months ago.”
“At one time, you told them—Jason—you wanted him to kill your mother, didn’t you?” asked McPherron.
“I didn’t tell him directly,” Rachelle said.
“He remembers the conversation. And he asked you directly, ‘What do you want me to do, kill her?’ And you said, ‘Yes.’” McPherron wasn’t bluffing this time. Jason had stated this in his jail cell interview to Sergeant Mark Habib.
“I wasn’t serious,” said Rachelle.
“Well, he believed it was serious,” McPherron said. “What about the assassination? The shooting from the woods?”
Crying so hard she couldn’t speak, Rachelle started to say, “I didn’t—”
“According to them,” interrupted McPherron, “you knew full well what was going to happen. You were riding in the car with your mother, and she was going to drop you off at the school and drive down the driveway, and Brian was going to shoot her.”
“I didn’t know they were going to do that.”
“You approved the plan. You said, ‘Yes, go for it.’”
“I did not approve the plan. I did not approve the plan.”
“Yes you did.”
“No I didn’t.”
“Listen: I’ve told you before. No more of this.”
“They called me,” she said, choking out the words.
“They called you when?” pressed McPherron.
“The day they were supposed to do it,” she said. “I didn’t know they were going to do it until the last second. And Jason happened to be talking to me, and I said, ‘No, don’t do it.’ That’s why it didn’t happen, because I didn’t want it to happen.”
It was a turning point in the case, the first time Rachelle admitted to being aware of the plot to kill her mother and having a role to the extent that she could call off a murder.
McPherron asked, “Why does this plot keep continuing?”
“I don’t know,” said Rachelle. “I told them, ‘I don’t want it to happen.’”
“You’ve been in constant contact with Jason for months now,” McPherron said.
“We hadn’t talked about it,” she insisted.
“Yes you had. You’ve been talking for months.”
“I told them I didn’t want it to happen!” she cried. “I love her! I love her!”
“They carried it out, and they carried it out with your blessing and your assistance,” McPherron said. “You told them this weekend was a good time to do it: ‘I’m going to be gone. My dad’s gone. Go through the window in the garage, like I always do, and you can do the deed. And I’ll be rid of my mom and I can live my life.’”
“I told them I didn’t want it to happen.”
“You talked to Jason on Sunday after you got back, and he gave you a status report.”
“No—”
“You told your friends Monday, before the body had been identified, that your mom probably died in a drunk-driving accident.”
“Because that’s what I assumed.”
“Because that was what the plan was. That’s what they told you the plan was.”
“I saw that there was a bottle of wine in the garbage and I thought she drank it because I know my dad wasn’t there. He couldn’t have drank it. And I saw the car was gone and I assumed the worst because I’m a pessimist.”
At this point Sergeant Habib spoke up. “Rachelle,” he said, “you knew about it before you knew about your mom’s car. You made these statements before the police notified your dad.”
“Because I’m a pessimist,” she said again.
McPherron jumped back in. “Jason gave you a status report Sunday after you got home,” he said. “He called you and told you, ‘We have accomplished the mission that you put us on.’”
“I did not do that,” Rachelle insisted.
“Yes you did,” said McPherron.
“I’ve had enough,” McPherron said. “I’ve had enough of this drama queen stuff. I’ve had enough of your lies.”
Habib said, “Rachelle, you must understand that we are not Brian and Jason.”
McPherron said, “We are not idiots. We’re not puppets you can dance around.”
“So fine,” Rachelle said indignantly. “Then throw me in jail. If you think I’m so guilty, throw me in fucking jail.”
“I want to know exactly what your role in this is,” McPherron said. “And I’m trying to offer you a solution to your dilemma. As I explained before, there’s a big difference between the person who puts their hands around a victim’s throat and kills her [and] between the person who says, ‘It’s a good weekend. Go for it.’”
“So instead of ten years I’ll get five,” said Rachelle.
“Well, it’s your life,” said McPherron. “You tell me how you want to live the rest of it.”
“I just want to have a normal life,” Rachelle said. “I want my mom back.”
“Well, that ain’t gonna happen,” said McPherron.
“No shit, Sherlock,” said Rachelle.
“You set in motion the events that we are grappling with now. And you need to start thinking about yourself. These two guys have given you up. They gave you up so quick, I couldn’t believe it. For two people who claim to love you, they handed you over to us on a silver platter, without thinking twice. They gave you up as soon as we put the screws to them. Now it’s your turn.”
Rachelle said, “I did call them that weekend when I was in Anchorage, and I told them not to do it.”
She told the investigators she called Jason from her friend Katrina Nelson’s cell phone: he was the guy named “Red” about whom Katrina spoke to police. Rachelle said that in the call she and Jason quarreled. He told her, “You’re just being irrational. You’re just being emotional. Don’t worry about it.” But she told him, ordered him, “No, no, don’t do it. I’m serious.” She told him that she and her mother were now getting along. Jason wasn’t listening to her, thinking she was just overacting. They ended their conversation with Rachelle hanging up on him.
Love You Madly Page 13