“And you can see why he had plenty of motive to kill Lauren Betancourt. She didn’t just screw his father and break his mother’s heart. That might be enough right there for some people.”
“But she did a lot more than that,” says the chief. “Simon probably blames Lauren Betancourt for the death of his mother and the destruction of his family.”
76
Jane
“Do I think Simon Dobias killed his dad? Yes, I do.”
Jane, Andy, and Chief Carlyle sit in front of the chief’s laptop, on a Zoom conference with a lieutenant in the St. Louis P.D. named Brenda Tarkington, and with Rick Gully, now retired and living in Wyoming.
“I’m with Brenda on that,”says Gully.“During final exams week his senior year in college, he drove down to St. Louis, clubbed Ted Dobias over the head with a wine bottle, then stabbed him in the stomach while he was down on the ground near his swimming pool and pushed him into the pool. Then he drove back up to Chicago and called up his shrink early that morning to confess his sins. Only, we couldn’t force the shrink to talk to us because of the privilege. Courts ruled against us. Even though he hadn’t talked to his shrink for a few years, the courts said he was still contacting her in a ‘patient-therapist capacity.’”
“And without that,” says Jane, “you couldn’t prove it?”
“We had no physical evidence,”says Gully.“The knife didn’t yield any prints. We pulled a print off the wine bottle and found some female DNA on a wineglass, but the print didn’t get a hit in the NCIC or match Simon’s prints, and the DNA database was a dead end, too. It was probably a weapon of opportunity; a bottle of wine Ted had shared with a lady friend some time earlier. And other than that...”
“It’s not like we had the tools we have now,”adds Lieutenant Tarkington.“Simon had some old model car, so there was no GPS function, no memory to prove where he’d driven that night, or even if he’d driven the car that night. The interstate didn’t have POD cameras like now. If he stopped for gas, hedidn’t use a credit card. And we checked, I’d bet, damn near all the security cameras of every gas station off the interstate between St. Louis and Chicago. Some had taped over the footage that night by the time we asked for it. Some didn’t really have functioning cameras, just used ’em for show. The ones that had working cameras and still had the footage—we never saw Simon Dobias in any of the footage.”
“We couldn’t disprove what he said, that he was home all night studying,”Rick Gully adds.“There was no way to show that wasn’t true. D.A. didn’t have a case.”
“He had a receipt, I think, for a pizza he ordered,”says Tarkington.“Right?”
Yes. Jane saw that in the case file they sent over.
“Yeah, shit, I’d forgotten all about that.”Gully laughs.“That’s how we got our time window. He signed a credit card slip for a pizza delivery at some specific time in the evening, early evening, like around five p.m. The pizza delivery guy confirmed that Simon Dobias answered the door and paid for the pizza. Left him a really big tip, too, I remember.”
Jane smirks. He left a big tip so he’d be memorable to the pizza guy.
“This guy is good,” whispers Andy Tate.
“So when we took that time and compared it against the time he showed up for his final exam the following morning at eight a.m.,”says Tarkington,“he barely had enough time to drive down to St. Louis, stab his father with a kitchen knife, and drive back up to Chicago and show up for that final exam. Just barely enough time.”
“Just about a perfect alibi,”says Gully.
“No other suspects?” Jane asks.
“None we could find. The dad had money, but there was no robbery. A lot of big companies probably hated him because he sued them and got huge awards, but big companies don’t murder plaintiff’s lawyers. They’d probably like to, but another one would just pop up and take his place.”
“Ted Dobias didn’t have a girlfriend at the time,”says Tarkington.“From what we could tell, he was paranoid about women. He had some escorts he used, some working girls. But no real relationships. Probably because of Lauren Lemoyne stealing his money, as we later found out from Grace Park P.D.”
“Besides,”Gully chimes in,“we settled on Simon pretty quickly. First thought, of course, a rich guy’s murdered, who benefits? Who’s the heir? It wasSimon. Stood to inherit, what, sixteen, seventeen million? But we came to find, Simon and his dad never talked after Ted moved to St. Louis. Not a phone call. Not a Christmas card. So Simon, as far as we could tell, probably didn’t even know he was inheriting the money, or how much.”
“The money wasn’t what did it,”says Tarkington.“It was him. Simon himself. When we interviewed him, the guy was cold. I remember thinking that—ice cold. Emotionless. And then we find out from Grace Park P.D. about the complaint Simon filed against Lauren Lemoyne back in 2004—how Ted cheated on Simon’s mother and let Lauren waltz off with all the money, and his mother’s suicide, and, you know, Simon was institutionalized for a while not long after her death—”
“Yep, read that.”
“—and then we hear all about the shit he pulled with the wrestler and the spiked Gatorade. And then we come to find out, the morning after Ted’s death, Simon’s making a phone call to his therapist at the crack of dawn, the first call he’s made to her in years.”
“Lots of bells and whistles, but no proof,” says Jane. “The thing I don’t get, though—why do it in 2010? His mother died in 2004. He goes into a mental institution for, what, eighteen, twenty months or so? That’s still just 2006. Why wait four more years to do it? And why pick the week of his college final exams?”
A pause. Jane has silenced everyone on the call with that question.
Then Brenda Tarkington lets loose with a loud chuckle. Gully breaks into laughter as well.
“I say something funny?”
“No, Sergeant, not at all. No disrespect intended,”says Tarkington.“It’s just that we asked ourselves that same question. Why wait all that time? Time passes, he moves on, he’s about to get his degree from a fancy undergrad and go on to a fancy law school. He’s ready to rock and roll. Why pick then to get revenge on Daddy?”