“Doesn’t matter,” Decker lied. “We already know the answer to that one because we have witnesses.”
“Who?” Holmes asked.
“C’mon, Mr. Holmes. Did you really think that you could live with Beth and Manny and belong to their church and have them disappear and not have people remember you?”
“I never belonged to their church!” Holmes replied.
“Everyone knew you were staying with Beth and Manny.” Decker leaned in close. “Look, sir, I understand the fix you were in. You were an ex-con. No one would hire you because of your background. You couldn’t go back to Santa Fe to get some help from your old lady because there were scores of people mad at you for boosting their cars or stealing their TVs. Plus your old man had dropped a couple of innocent lives. So you went to visit your brother and sister-in-law in L.A. You figured they’d be good for something. You’re not going to deny, right?”
Holmes said, “I got to go to the bathroom.”
“No problem,” Decker said. “
Again, they took a break just as Decker was on a roll. Still, it was good to get up and stretch one’s legs. When they returned to the interrogation room, Dudley was still trying to convince Holmes not to talk. But the big man was insisting that he could take good care of himself. He sat down, poured himself another glass of water, and said, “So I visited my brother. So what?”
“So what?” Decker repeated. “The first ‘so what’ is that your brother and sister-in-law have been missing for over thirty years. The second ‘so what’ is that we’ve recovered Beth Hernandez’s murdered body, and the final ‘so what’ is that you’re our prime suspect in her murder.”
“I didn’t do it!” Holmes blurted out. “Manny did it!”
Dudley slapped his face. “Can I please talk to you alone for a minute, Ray?”
“Absolutely, you can talk to him right after I book him for murder-”
“I swear on my mother’s grave, I didn’t kill her!” Holmes shouted. “Manny killed her in a fit of rage. I was there! I saw it! That’s the fuck why I moved to Arizona. I needed to get far, far away.”
Decker imagined the high fives Scott and Marge were exchanging after hearing Holmes’s admission to being at the scene of Beth’s death. But Decker was still far away from the full confession. He said, “Tell me what happened, Ray. It may bring the charges down from murder to accessory after the fact.”
“Or it may not,” Dudley said. “I know I’m sounding like a broken record, but he’s lying, Ray. You fell into his leg trap. Don’t keep pulling on it or you’ll wind up an amputee.”
“Taz, I swear I didn’t kill her. Why should I take the fall for my stupid brother’s mistake?”
“You’re right, Mr. Holmes,” Decker soothed. “If Manny killed his wife, you shouldn’t take the fall. So tell me what happened.”
Holmes held up his hand to silence his lawyer. “They got into an argument. He pushed her hard. She fell backward and hit her head. I wasn’t even in the room when it happened. I was chilling in the living room and they were going at it in the bedroom. She was a freak, man. She was screaming at my poor brother and I think he just cracked.”
“What were they arguing about?”
“I told you already. I don’t know!”
“Take a guess.”
Holmes looked away. “Probably money.”
“Maybe they were arguing about the money that Manny had taken from the church funds to get you back on your feet?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do, Ray,” Decker said. “We’ve talked to people who were there. Alyssa Bright Mapplethorpe, Christian Woodhouse…members of the church. They remember you and your brother and Beth very well.”
Holmes said, “I did not take any money and I did not kill Beth! Period!”
“I didn’t say you took it, Ray. I said that your brother took it.”
“Jesus!” Holmes gnashed his teeth and mopped up his brow. “First of all, Manny borrowed it. Second of all, if he borrows money and doesn’t pay it back, how is that my fault?”
“It isn’t,” Decker said. “So tell me your side of the story. Because I have lots of others who are telling me their side and it doesn’t look good for you.”
“Okay, okay.” Holmes wiped his face, though he wasn’t sweating nearly as much as before. Dealing with the truth, even partial truths, seemed to calm him down. “This is what happened in a nutshell. I needed a place to crash. My baby brother invited me to L.A., but his bitch wife wasn’t at all happy about it. Even though I never did anything to her, even though I stayed out of their way, even though I minded my own fucking business, that bitch just had it in for me. Finally, Manny couldn’t take it anymore. He said he loved me, but it just wasn’t working out and I’d have to leave. I told him it was okay. I told him I had a buddy in Arizona and he could probably give me a crash pad for a couple of weeks until I could find construction work there. I didn’t want to work construction in L.A. Too many damn greasers. I am not a fucking Mexican. I am an American citizen from New Mexico and I’ll be damned if I’d work side by side with a bunch of illegals.”
“I got it,” Decker said. “Go on.”
“Manny felt real bad about kicking me out. I was his big brother after all. So Manny offered…I repeat, he offered to give me money. I said okay. I didn’t ask questions. I was in a bad way and I needed help. I didn’t know where it came from. I didn’t ask how he got it. I only found out later, when Beth was yelling at him, that he was the treasurer of his church and that he borrowed the money from the church funds.”
“When was this?”
“The night it happened. Beth was yelling at him, demanding that Manny get the money back. I felt bad that I was the reason they were fighting, so I finally knocked on the bedroom door and explained to the bitch that I didn’t have a penny in my pocket. I was trying to tell her that I’d pay the loan back as soon as I got on my feet again. I even offered her interest.”
“How much did he give you?”
“Around a thousand bucks.”
“Try again, Mr. Holmes.”
“It was a thousand dollars.”
“The account was looted completely.”
“You want to know what happened, you got to let me finish, okay?”
Decker said, “Go on. So Manny loaned you a thousand dollars and Beth wanted you to give the money back.”
“Exactly.” Holmes drank another glass of water. “Now this is the part that gets a little fuzzy. At that point, all I’m doing is trying to leave the goddamn apartment, but by then, Beth is in overdrive. Screaming at him, screaming at me, insisting that I give the money back right now! ‘Fuck her,’ I say to myself. ‘Manny gave me the money, not her. I don’t have to listen to her.’ So like I said, I start to walk away, then Beth screams that she’s going to call the cops on me and report that I stole the money.”
He exhaled with a snort.
“She picks up the phone and starts to dial the police or the operator or information, someone. So that’s when Manny goes over to her and grabs the phone from her hand. He says to her, ‘Beth, you can’t do that.’ Then she says, ‘I’ll do what I please and you can’t stop me!’ Then, I guess that was too much for Manny. He finally decides to be a man. So he says, ‘You let my brother alone and let me worry about the money. I’m the treasurer and you’re nothing but a mousy piece of shit without me.’ And to emphasize the point, he pushes her, not meaning to hurt her, just meaning to get her out of the way.”
Holmes swallowed, his eyes as blank as the wall he was looking at.
“He pushes her a little too hard and she cracks her head against the wall and drops to the floor.”
Dudley was about to say something, but just shook his head instead. He continued to stare as if the scene were taking place in front of his eyes. It was certainly replaying itself in Holmes’s brain. But Decker knew that the evidence didn’t match the story that Holmes was recounting. The bash on Beth’s skull was caused by a blunt object striking her in the forehead region and was probably delivered face-to-face. It was not an injury that could have been caused by the back of Beth’s head hitting the wall.