Empty Promises

Leifbach had been open about where he’d bought the gun that Larry wanted “for protection.” The detectives talked with the proprietor of a pawnshop near skid row where Leifbach said he’d bought the missing Beretta. They learned that he had also bought fifty rounds of .32 caliber Remington-Peters ammunition. “Mr. Leifbach picked a .32 caliber Beretta, Model 81, on December 14,” the pawnshop owner said. That was just what Gareth had told the campus police. And the Remington-Peters casings matched those found at the shooting site. Interesting …
    The detectives then verified Gareth’s story further by checking the records of the Yellow Cab Company. Their trip records showed one call to Duerksen’s apartment complex on December 14. “Our cab number 45 went out there in the morning at ten A.M. He took the fare on a round-trip to the Central Loan pawnshop,” the cab manager reported. “The guy went in and came back a few minutes later. He was driven back to his home address. He tipped five dollars on a ten-dollar fare.”
    The physical description of the taxi passenger matched Gareth Leifbach. Leifbach had already admitted that he purchased the gun, but he hadn’t mentioned that he picked it up only nine hours before Larry Duerksen was shot. He had told the University of Washington police that he and Larry had the gun for three days before they decided to get rid of it on the afternoon of December 14. It was a small variation on the truth. Was it significant? Minor inconsistencies in recollection don’t matter much in ordinary life, but they can be crucial in a murder investigation.
    Detectives Homan and Tando drove to the dead man’s apartment and picked up Gareth Leifbach for a trip to Homicide for an interview. After reading and signing his rights admonishment, Gareth again launched into a strange monologue about his homosexuality, his fight with the army, and the huge lawsuit he had filed against the army.
    His attitude seemed inappropriate. The only way to describe his attitude was grandiose; the grief he’d shown right after his roommate was shot was no longer evident, and the change was startling. “I’m into a heavy schedule of appearances and speeches for my cause,” he said proudly. “I’ve had a lot of publicity. You’ve probably seen me on television.”
    Homan nodded noncommittally. He had heard the guy was pretty full of himself, but he had never seen him on television. The tall, easygoing detective asked Gareth about his life, and how he and Larry had met.
    Gareth said he was born in Battle Creek, Michigan, on June 9, 1958, and joined the U.S. Army on August 7, 1977. He was honorably discharged on November 2, 1979. He had met Larry Duerksen for the first time the month before his discharge. “He wrote to me and I wrote back, and we began to talk on the phone,” he said.
    He told Homan that Larry proved to be a really loyal friend who readily threw in his lot with Gareth. He said they’d planned to tour for gay rights together. Gareth Leifbach was affable during the interview, bristling only once when Detective Mike Tando asked him to define his relationship with Larry. “That’s too personal to discuss,” he said imperiously.
    If he expected the detectives to voice any opinion one way or the other about his lifestyle, he was disappointed; they didn’t care. They wanted only to solve his roommate’s murder, and in that sense, it might matter whether the men were lovers as well as friends.
    Once more, Gareth repeated his version of the events of Friday, December 14. He was precise in his recall of the phone calls from the stranger—the man who had called Larry and him faggots on December 12 and again on December 14. And this time, he included in the day’s events his trip to pick up the gun. Yes, now he recalled that he’d bought it the day Larry died.
    Gareth told about his lunch at the pizza place and recalled that it was raining so hard, his jacket had been soaked through and didn’t dry until the next day. It was almost as if he had noted the investigators’ doubting expressions during his first interview. Now his version dovetailed smoothly with the facts as Homan and Tando knew them. “I showed the gun to Larry when he got home around one-thirty, and he loaded it,” he said. “He stepped out to empty the trash, and when he came back he said ‘Gareth, we shouldn’t have gotten a gun. If someone wants to get us, they will anyway.’ So Larry suggested we throw