Don’t Look Behind You

body pieces in plastic bags.”
    Gary Clower needed to remove as many of the motives for murder Renee might have had as he could. Witnesses had told Ben Benson about the briefcase full of large bills, the Mercedes, Joe’s gold nugget jewelry, even the yellow meat truck that Geri Hesse had. He asked Renee about those things of value.
    She could not recall Joe’s briefcase. She was sure she had kept nothing that belonged to the victim. She admitted disposing of the gun, simply because she had access to a boat trip some weeks later and she could toss it to the bottom of Lake Washington without arousing suspicion.
    She hadn’t wanted the Mercedes in the first place, and she had no idea what had happened to Joe Tarricone’s jewelry.
    “Since that day at the house, have you talked to anybody about what happened there—other than your mother and your brother?”
    “No, I have not.”
    “And is it accurate to say that for the last thirty years, that you lied about the last time you saw Mr. Tarricone?”
    “Continuously,”
    “Why did you do that?”
    “To protect my brother, my mother, and myself.”
    “Did the extent of Mr. Tarricone’s attention to you cause you to hurt him or kill him?”
    “No. Absolutely not.”
    “Did you ever ask your brother to harm him in any way?”
    “I did not.”
    “Did you kill him?”
    “I did not kill him.”
    “Were you present in the house when he was killed?”
    “I was not.”
    “Did you do
anything
at all to encourage your brother to kill Mr. Tarricone?”
    “No,” Renee answered to this final question by her own attorney, “I did not.”
    She had done nothing to ingratiate herself with the jury; Renee Curtiss seemed offended that she had even had to answer her own attorney’s questions.

Chapter Eighteen
    If Renee Curtiss’s testimony in her own defense had left jurors and court-watchers sick to their stomachs, revulsed by a side of life they might never have imagined, what would happen now as Deputy Prosecutor Dawn Farina rose to cross-examine her?
    Renee eyed Farina warily as she faced questions not designed to make her look even marginally innocent.
    “When detectives Benson and Wood contacted you on March 24, 2008, they advised you of your Miranda warnings? Correct?” Farina began.
    “That’s correct.”
    Yes, Renee agreed that it was her signature on the bottom of the rights form, and her initials after each warning. Yes, Ben Benson had offered to take her to see her husband’s doctor. Yes, she had worked for Joe for over a year, and he had bought her many presents.
    “He paid for your rent while you were in Alaska?”
    “No. I told [the detectives] that I was generously compensated. If they wanted to consider that he was payingme a wage, that’s fine. If they want to say he paid the rent, I was generously compensated.”
    Dawn Farina brought out the fact that Renee had been the business manager at Henry’s Bail Bonds. She was no neophyte when it came to the justice system.
    Renee’s demeanor was frosty and unemotional. Most of her answers to Farina’s cross-examination questions were, “I don’t recall.”
    She could not remember meeting Joe’s children or talking with them on the phone after he vanished. She agreed that she might not have told the Pierce County detectives that she lived at two addresses at the time Joe was killed. It didn’t seem important.
    “The only time that Nick Notaro came to the Puyallup house was the one time Joseph Tarricone was killed. Correct?”
    “Correct.”
    Yes, Nick had stayed at the Puyallup house, and Joe had been there several times, although he didn’t stay over.
    “He came to the barbecue during the summer of 1978 and brought meat to grill for you and your family. Correct?”
    “I don’t specifically remember meat—but he could have.”
    “Do you recall him being there for the barbecue?”
    “Yes.”
    Farina switched to Renee’s invitation to her brother to come down and help her at the Canyon Road house. After repeated questions, Renee thought she might have mentioned that Joe was “harassing” her. “I mean that [Nick]was well aware of Joe’s harassment. Due to conversations with my mom and me.”
    “And you never called the police to report Joe’s harassment of you while you were living in Puyallup or in Washington State?”
    “Correct.”
    “Nick Notaro brought with him from Alaska the gun that was used to kill Joseph Tarricone?”
    “I believe so,” Renee said