Brian Lane - Mind Games with a Serial Killer

According to my brother, our top speed would be sufficiently more than the Pantera’s, and, even though the Pantera was way out of sight, we ought to be able to catch him and smoke him within ten miles.

In fact, it took only six.

We reeled in the Pantera, laughed and gave the high sign to its stunned driver, and then blew on down the road. He was just a little yellow speck in our exhaust. He was a limp dick.

Later, I’d slowed down near a truck stop, and the Pantera flashed by us. Later again, I’d gone by the Pantera again and lost him completely. He knew we were just toying with him, that he was ours whenever the mood struck us. Next time maybe he’d get a real car.

We continued down the road for quite some time, speeding, slowing, speeding, slowing, and I never saw the Pantera again, except that, after we crashed, when I was being helped up into the ambulance and we were spitting dust and sand and smoke and tearing away, the disjointed, moving horizon revealed a yellow glare, possibly the Pantera parked amongst some other cars at the crash scene.

“There was a Pantera—a yellow one—on the road,” I said to the officer on the phone, “we passed him once or twice, I’m not sure.”

“He says you were racing.”

So that was it—this Pantera driver who’d felt his manhood violated when we’d kicked his ass, he was now claiming that we’d been racing, and that he’d slowed down to be safe while I’d raced on and crashed. He’d let us win . He’d turned a non-race into a race and his loser lemon-colored lemon car into a trophy winner. He’d rewritten history. According to him, he was not only innocent of any wrongdoing, he was humble, he didn’t have anything to prove by going fast. That had to be his story—it was the only story that justified the cop’s questions.

“We’d passed the Pantera—he was nowhere around when we crashed,” I said.

“Know how fast you were going?”

I didn’t know, not for sure, but I certainly knew that the officer knew—all he had to do was measure the skid marks, which I was sure he’d done. He was asking me a question he knew the answer to, solely to hear if I’d incriminate myself. He was also lancing my guilty conscience—regardless of the fact that I always sped, that my family always sped, that my dead and dying friend and family had encouraged or at least ratified my speeding, the more this officer asked me questions, the more I felt I’d done something wrong and that this disaster was all my fault after all.

“The speed limit,” I said. “Or maybe a little faster.”

In those days, pre-radar, cops gave you a little grace over the speed limit so you couldn’t argue a ticket if their speedometers were slightly off calibration. So, you could admit to traveling within that grace index. That was how I explained my answer to myself. In fact, I was foolishly red-flagging the fact that I felt guilty about something.

“A lot faster,” said the officer, hoping to prompt a numeric declaration from me.

“At the time of the accident, there was traffic and we were slowing down,” I said, which was true so far as I remembered or told myself I remembered.

“But you were racing the Pantera?” he asked again.

I sighed relief at the repeat question—now I could accurately divine the complete theory from which the officer was working. In fact, we must have been going comparatively slower at the time of the accident, or else the officer would have flat-out accused me of a high speed. So, the only way he could make me out to be a criminal would be by “proving” that, regardless of speed, we were in a reckless race with the Pantera. If we were racing, then I could be damned for prior speed even if I weren’t speeding at the time of the accident itself. The crash would be deemed the product of the race, and I would be deemed a manslaughterer who’d endangered everyone on the road and killed his friend and family.

Of course, the truth was that I was not racing. We’d long before passed the Pantera and been cruising along, minding our own business, with my friend and my mom falling asleep from the sweet monotony, the cradle-rocking throb of the road. So as not to wake our passengers, my brother and I had been whispering about the song on the radio just before the crash, and he was leaning against the doorjamb and thinking about snoozing himself.

“I’d passed the Pantera a long time before the accident,” I said with finality to the officer. My own sense of guilt was back to being my own business—clearly I was guilty of no crime under law.

“Okay,” said the officer; and then he sneered, making sure I knew that he didn’t believe me: “Whatever you say.” And he hung up. Not a word of condolence or a hope for the best, no concern for my mother or my brother. This cop had gotten a statement for his report, he’d make his recommendation for or against prosecution, and that would be that.

And I promised myself quite sincerely that, if I was charged with any crime for the crash, I would kill myself—it was obviously a mistake that I had survived anyway.

As it turned out, Officer Tucker had a policy: If someone died on his beat, then he pushed for prosecution. Let the court sort it out, was his thinking. Luckily, the local prosecutor felt otherwise and filed no charges, but not before my father and I hired a local lawyer to keep track of things and make sure the prosecutor knew the whole story while he was considering the matter. An L.A. judge who knew me on a personal basis also chimed in to vouch for my character. I think everyone knew but didn’t want to tell me they knew what I planned on doing were I to be charged. People kept telling me how strong I was, but it was blind strength and certain to crumble if reality opened my eyes.

As for Officer Tucker’s report, I was certain it damned me, and even more sure I’d been misquoted. My lawyer told me that it had been a mistake to take that phone call, that you should never talk to the cops, that everything you say will be used against you. Count on it.

Nonetheless, if you’re innocent, you think you can clear yourself just by telling the truth as you know it. Innocent instinct says say more, not less. Meanwhile, if you’re guilty, you tend to think you can admit to a little something, that you can throw the cops a bone without having to feed ’em the whole steak. When I interned as a lawyer at the L.A. City Attorney’s, prosecuting drunk drivers, there was not one case where the detained driver didn’t confess to drinking “two beers”, like that was an okay amount and not enough to constitute DUI. Of course, “two beers” was really two six-packs, and the cops knew it.

In fairness to cops, they always get lied to—”two beers” is the least of it—so it’s no wonder they can’t recognize truth when it crosses their paths. But doesn’t that tell us that there’s something wrong with our system, that cops are sent out on the street with wrong marching orders and wrong attitudes?

Convicts like Bill Suff learn—or at least they’re supposed to learn—to shut the fuck up when anyone asks them anything about anything. Nonetheless, guilty or innocent, that’s a tough row to hoe. When someone’s accusing you of something, you want to respond. And, when you’re the lead detective in the biggest murder case your county’s ever had, you’re determined to interrogate and keep on interrogating until you decide your work is done.

As typed by the Riverside Police Department, here is the transcript from the last minutes of Bill Suff’s interrogation the night of his arrest in January 1992. He’d been in custody for the better part of a full day by this point, held incommunicado, interrogated repeatedly, overridden by his inquisitors whenever he raised the subject of being given legal counsel; he’d been caught in lie after lie, bluff after blown bluff. Now lead homicide Detective Keers moved in for her own “kill”. None of this has been made public before, and none of it was admissible at trial. The primary murder referred to is Eleanor Casares, the last of the spree, December 1991.