Mortal Danger

we’ve got some things here and hopefully you’re gonna be man enough to stand up here and talk to us. Do some damage control. Here’s what we think….”
    Benson told Daniel that he was going to be arrested for two murders, and, with his background, he was probably going to prison for the rest of his life.
    “I’d just as soon not see Jennifer go down with you,” he continued. “I think we’ve also got evidence that she was in the house—”
    “We were all in the house,” Daniel blurted. “That day when I tattooed—”
    “Like I said, we’ve got evidence that you were in the house when the murders happened.”
    “That’s impossible. I was in bed.”

Chapter Four
    Daniel Tavares protested that he had never kicked the door panel in, or done anything with the front door’s locks. Then he added that he really had seen a red truck there, and he thought the occupants had kicked the door in. His next fantasy lie was that he’d met someone to whom he was to give the gun back, and that man had been driving a small white truck! That made a red truck, a white truck, and a green truck that were allegedly involved in the execution of the Maucks.
    If it hadn’t been so tragic, his rambling lies might have been funny. But the detectives knew far too much for Daniel Tavares to be a convincing liar. They had the tapes from Ma’s and Pa’s Roundup, showing him in the crowd. They knew he’d joined up with Carl Rider, and that they’d smoked marijuana and meth. They knew when the tires of Jennifer’s Ford Explorer had been slashed, and they knew that there had never been any trucks with chrome roll bars in the Maucks’ driveway.
     
    It was Daniel Tavares’s turn to be shocked. “Things are out of control here,” he protested, as Benson and Catey pointed out the physical evidence they had that placed him inside the Maucks’ home when they were killed.
    Benson asked again if Jennifer was involved.
    “She’s not involved. Jennifer’s not involved at all.”
    “Okay,” Benson said. “Tell us what happened.”
    “It was a hired thing,” Tavares said faintly.
    “Who hired you?”
    “Somebody that don’t like them.” Their subject was obviously scurrying frantically around his brain, trying to find something that would convince them he’d acted under duress, something that would save him from facing the death penalty. He insisted he couldn’t tell them who had hired him to kill the Maucks. “My whole family would be killed. I can’t do that.”
    Since his mother was already dead—thanks to him—the detectives wondered what family he was talking about. Jennifer? Jeff and Kristel Freitas, who were already scared to death of him ?
    He was slowly beginning to confess, but he couldn’t recall when he’d gone over to the Maucks’ house. He’d been high “on weed.” He refused to discuss exactly what had happened, but he was adamant that Jennifer “didn’t have nothing to do with it. Nothing.”
    “Does she know? Did you tell her what happened?”
    Tavares refused to answer. He changed the subject to say he was supposed to get paid $20,000 to carry out the double murder.
    “Did you get money up front?” Benson asked.
    “No.”
    “What kind of hit man doesn’t get something up front?”
    “A stupid one,” Tavares answered glumly. And he might have been right on target there. No, he hadn’t taken any pictures of the bodies to show to the people who had hired him.
    There had been two shoe prints in blood. One matched Daniel’s shoes, and the other was a mystery. They thought it could be Jennifer’s—but her husband kept insisting she’d never been to the death site. He was trying to protect her and to build on his story of being a gun for hire—but the people behind it all were the ones who gave him the gun and the ammunition. He couldn’t recall what kind of gun it was, not even the caliber. No, he didn’t know where Jennifer’s .22 handgun was.
    “We know you left after you shot Brian,” Ben Benson said. “And that you came back at some point later on?”
    He admitted that he’d been away from the Maucks’ home for only five minutes—he’d gone up near the barn to wash his hands. But he’d always been alone. After the shooting, he said he’d given the gun back to those conspiring to kill Brian and Beverly Mauck.
    The detectives had tended to believe that the young couple were killed sometime in the wee hours of Friday night–Saturday morning. But Daniel Tavares said