Don’t Look Behind You

relationship with Joe, although she knew he wasn’t happy about Kurt.
    Although Renee’s answers often began with “I don’t recall,” she did remember that Kurt and Joe had known about each other, but she couldn’t say if they ever had harsh words about it.
    And then, in the midseventies, Renee said, she, her mother, and her daughter had moved to Kirkland, a suburb of Seattle.
    “So when you moved down here to Kirkland,” Benson asked, “did that end your working relationship with Joe?”
    “It did.”
    “What did you do for a job when you lived in Kirkland?”
    “I was working for a company called Elite Models.” She acknowledged that it was an escort service.
    “Was your mom working?”
    “She might’ve been working in a nursing home.”
    Renee said she had broken her engagement to Kurt Winkler because he wouldn’t leave Alaska either. After ayear in their north end apartment, the women had moved to the Canyon Road house in Puyallup.
    “Okay. Did Joseph Tarricone come and visit at that house?”
    “Joe didn’t know where to find me at first, but eventually he located me,” Renee said. “He was there several times … several times. The majority of the time uninvited. I can’t recall how many times.”
    Renee’s face and chest were now brick red. She said her mother might have invited Joe over some of the time.
    “He was, he was kind of obsessed. I mean he’d do almost anything to be around me.”
    Ben Benson asked Renee about the barbecue at her house in the summer of 1978. “Do you recall what month the barbecue would’ve taken place?”
    “Summer … July or August. I mean it was warm. It could’ve been in August because there’s probably three or four of us who have birthdays in August.”
    “Okay. But Joseph was there for that barbecue?”
    “I remember him being there.”
    “Was Nick there?”
    “I do not believe Nick was there.”
    “How about Cassie?”
    “I don’t know. I’m not sure.”
    “Did Joe bring steaks and meat to the barbecue?”
    “I’m sure he would have.”
    “Do you remember having an argument with him at the barbecue?”
    Benson was leading Renee into territory that could be dangerous for her, and she parried his questions thoughtfully.“Yeah,” she finally answered. “It would’ve been something like [me saying], you know, ‘I’m not interested in you. I do not wanna be romantically involved with you.’ I don’t recall anything more specifically, and I don’t recall, you know, certainly there was nobody—there was no fisticuffs or anything like that. Would’ve been, you know, it was almost the same every time I saw him, you know, he wanted, would claim, ‘Oh, can’t we just be friends?’ and then he didn’t want just friendship. He wanted, you know, to—to somehow buy my love and affection.”
    Renee denied now that Nick had
ever
been to the Canyon Road house—until Benson reminded her she had told them early in their conversation that he
had
been there at least once.
    “That I recall.” She quickly recovered. “Yes.”
    “Let’s talk about that more,” Benson said easily. “In relation to when the barbecue happened to when Nick came down, do you remember how close that was?”
    “I mean, I’m not sure that Nick wasn’t there [at the barbecue], but I don’t recall him being there. It could’ve been within days—it could’ve been within weeks—”
    “But you’re certain—you told us earlier that what happened to Joe didn’t happen on the night of the barbecue?”
    “Um-hum.”
    “Why are you certain?”
    “’Cause I don’t recall Nick being there.”
    She remembered that her brother had come to Canyon Road right after his appendix surgery. “I talked to him on the phone when he was in the hospital.”
    “Did you talk to him after he was out of the hospital?”
    “Yes … I told him I could use some help and, you know, if he needed to come and rest, relax, and recuperate, it would probably be a good thing.”
    Renee’s version of how Nick happened to come down to Puyallup changed with every answer. She did recall telling him that her mother was putting a lot of pressure on her, and Joe Tarricone was practically stalking her and pressuring her, too. He hadn’t hurt her physically, but he’d pushed her, and threatened her.
    “And what was the nature of those threats?” Benson asked.
    “Everything from ‘I’m not gonna stop—I’m gonna continue to make your life miserable.’ He scared my mom at one