Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 127715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 639(@200wpm)___ 511(@250wpm)___ 426(@300wpm)
And Dern had gone hard at her, clearly in an effort to break her in order to coerce her into saying something that would incriminate her parents.
He’d done this even though there were no witnesses placing Sonny or Avery Rainier at the scene, and Sonny’s fingerprints being there were likely left after he did the many odd jobs that the Dietrichs themselves shared they’d hired him to do.
Although Sonny’s prints were everywhere, they’d only found one of Avery’s. And it was so obviously placed, it was laughable, and it demonstrated how untouchable Dern thought he was.
The Dietrichs had reported that Simon “Sonny” Rainier told them he was having money problems and had asked them for a loan. They’d further reported he’d not been happy when they’d turned him down. They’d shared his demeanor was aggressive and desperate.
They’d shared this when no one, even Lillian, who had access to their bank accounts, which had three thousand in checking, and seven thousand in savings and a money market at nearly ten, corroborated their story.
There had been no interviews conducted with informants that could tell them if Sonny or Avery dealt with local bookies, loan sharks or dealers to see if they had a debt that twenty grand couldn’t cover. Nor was there any evidence in the file that the police had gone to any stores or suppliers Sonny or Avery might be in arrears with. No friends or clients came forward or reported under interview that Sonny or Avery had mentioned money issues, asked for a loan, or had gambling, drink or drug addictions. And pulling their credit card histories showed they paid them off in full, every month.
They obviously had a thing about debt, since they not only owned their home outright, they only had one car, and they owned that outright too.
Lillian had given her mother and father an alibi, a thorough one.
That evening, they were home and Lillian sensed nothing amiss. Her mother had made hamburgers and homemade fries for dinner, and Lillian had helped. There were caramel chocolate brownies with ice cream for dessert, and Sonny made those.
They’d then watched TV, and Lillian had stayed up to study before she had to go to work. Her mother dropped her at work. Her protective father had called twice while she was at the gas station, and swung by to visit with her, sticking around for about forty-five minutes before he went home.
As usual, her mom was up and had breakfast ready for Lillian by the time Sonny went to get his daughter and bring her home.
Shortly after, both were picked up for questioning about the robbery.
The night of the robbery, the Dietrichs had been at a party, gone from six thirty, returning at twelve forty-five.
Lillian left for work at a quarter to eleven, and since Avery took her, the drop off caught on an outside camera at the gas station, it gave Sonny and Avery less than two hours to drive the twenty minutes to the Dietrichs, ransack their house, steal jewelry, crack open a safe and lift its contents, grab five rifles and four handguns, and drive away in a stolen Jeep and a Chevy Tahoe, at least one of them having to return to get their own vehicle, before the Dietrichs returned.
It wasn’t an impossible crime, for, say, a career criminal.
A husband and wife finding themselves in money straits pulling it off, including cracking open a safe, was see-through it was so thin.
Sonny was caught on a surveillance camera inside the gas station, arriving at one twenty-seven, and he’d stayed, as Lillian had explained, until two-oh-eight.
Harry had viewed that surveillance video and saw a tall, handsome man with dark auburn hair who didn’t seem to have a care in the world as he chatted with his girl, ate a pack of peanuts he bought at the station and chased them down with Fresca.
Watching that video made Harry’s gut burn.
This was a man who worked hard, that work physical, and he loved his daughter so much, he was up at one in the morning and hanging with her at a gas station because he wanted to do what he could to keep her safe.
The man had to be out of his mind when he and his wife were forced to leave that daughter behind.
And Harry wouldn’t even allow himself to contemplate what was going through their heads the moments before the bullets entered their brains.
The picture was forming, and Harry was seeing they didn’t leave Lillian because they were all good just as long as they had each other.
They left her because they knew the danger would follow, and she was safer at home.
Preliminary interviews with Sonny and Avery done before they saw the writing on the wall and hauled ass, or got tweaked by what might turn out to be the severity of the situation if those bodies were actually them, and they again hauled ass, repeated the same things Lillian said…to the letter.