What You Don't Know, page 24
Cookie had nothing to offer but her continued sobs and screams and kicks and flails. Tree yanked his gun out of his waistband and pointed it at Cookie’s head. Her sobs were replaced with sniveling.
“You gonna stop all that crying?” he asked.
She erupted into a fresh round of tears.
Tree fired.
Blair and Farrah screamed and fell into each other as Cookie went limp, blood pouring from the crater in her forehead. Tree shot her twice more and waited, staring at her for a moment before he sniffed and tapped Dio’s shoulder.
“Yo, she got all that jewelry in her pockets. Help me empty them out.”
Farrah trembled, the gun shot reverberating in her ears, the thick, metallic smell of gun powder swirling in the air. She kept her face tucked into her mother’s shoulder, unable to look at Cookie, unable to watch Tree and Dio pilfer her mother’s jewelry from the dead girl’s pockets and stuff it into their own.
Tree sniffed again, wiping the back of his hand across his nose as he looked over at them. He limped over to where they remained huddled and whimpering.
“We gonna tear this bitch apart,” he said, almost to himself, as he undid their feet. “We going room to room and we going to find Mally Mal then I’m gonna shoot him. I’m gonna shoot him in his face, and I’m going to enjoy it. I’m going to enjoy watching his bitch ass fall to the ground, smoking, damn brain everywhere.” He stopped and looked at Blair. “And you’re gonna watch.”
“Please. Please don’t—”
He smacked her mother across the face and wrenched her up from the floor, commanding Dio to do the same to Farrah. Tree and Dio pushed them up the stairs. Farrah’s eyes darted around the dark living room, searching for her father’s bulk.
And then she heard the click.
The Last Hours
Lieutenant Dimitri Cora: Here’s what happened in the Gilbert house in those final hours.
* * *
It’s four fifteen a.m. The family is tied up in the basement. Blair and Farrah are asleep, as are Terrell, Courtney, and Lenard.
* * *
Malcolm is awake. It’s just him, a movie blaring on the TV, and hours to go before the bank opens.
* * *
Miraculously, as he’s sitting there, he spots a paperclip wedged between the baseboard and edge of the carpet.
* * *
He doesn’t have time to think about how it got here. It was there and he was going to use it. With his good hand, he manages to poke through the mounds of duct tape at his feet and wrists ready to sneak upstairs for his gun concealed in a hidden safe in a bookcase in his study. He doesn’t want what happened the last time to happen again. He wants to be ready.
* * *
Just as he gets himself out of the tape, ready to head upstairs, Courtney rolls over and wakes up. She sees he’s freed himself. He freezes. They lock eyes for a moment.
Neither one moves. Neither one breathes. Neither one can look away from the other.
* * *
Courtney is the one to blink. She rolls over, giving Malcolm permission to leave. She’ll keep his secret.
* * *
Malcolm sneaks upstairs and retrieves his gun, a twenty-two he was certain Terrell would find on his earlier rampage through the study. The one he told his wife he’d get rid of the year before. She feared his concussion might lead him to blow his brains out, but he secretly kept the gun to prove he wouldn’t.
* * *
He’s about to creep back downstairs to untie Blair and Farrah. He hears the commotion as Terrell and Lenard wake up and discover he’s gone. Hears Terrell shoot and kill Courtney.
* * *
Terrell and Lenard hustle the women up the stairs. Malcolm aims his gun at Terrell. It’s dark. He’s seeing double. His hands are shaking. He shoots at Terrell, but misses.
* * *
Lenard and Terrell both fire at Malcolm, who ducks behind a couch. Terrell runs out of bullets. Lenard’s gun jams. Malcolm gets off another shot, hitting Lenard in the shoulder. Terrell grabs a log from the fireplace and rushes toward Malcolm, who gets off another shot, but misses again.
Terrell smacks Malcolm in the face with the log, sending Malcolm’s gun flying.
* * *
Blair, her hands still bound with tape, dives for Malcolm’s gun. Lenard manages to drag himself to her and stomps on her hands, breaking them both.
* * *
Terrell and Malcolm continue to brawl on the floor. Farrah makes a run for the front door. Lenard sees her. He grabs Malcolm’s gun.
* * *
He fires two bullets into her back.
* * *
She falls to the ground.
* * *
Lenard fires at Malcolm, hitting him in the thigh. He drops to the floor. Terrell takes the gun from Lenard and aims at Malcolm. Hits him in the stomach. Terrell takes aim a third time. That gun also jams.
* * *
Blair drags herself across the room toward her barely-breathing daughter, manages to get her arms around her and holds her.
* * *
A bloodied Malcolm struggles to his feet and staggers toward a stunned Terrell.
* * *
Terrell aims the gun at Malcolm and pulls the trigger, hoping he can get it going again.
* * *
Nothing.
* * *
Malcolm continues his advance. Tree’s hands are up in the air, his head is wobbling in disbelief.
* * *
A shot rings out.
* * *
Malcolm falls to the ground, a bullet exploding in his other leg.
* * *
It’s Lenard.
* * *
Malcolm’s writhing on the floor. Blair’s screaming. Terrell drops his gun and takes Lenard’s gun from him.
* * *
He stands over Blair and shoots her twice in the chest, just missing her heart.
* * *
Terrell rips Blair’s necklace from her body, gets Lenard to his feet, says they have to set the house on fire. They grab the rest of Blair’s jewelry then run through the house looking for matches, lighter fluid, anything. They settle for dumping a bottle and a half of wine they’d been drinking earlier over the bodies and scattering around some tea lights they found in a kitchen drawer after taking them out of their metal containers. They didn’t want to be there when the fire started, so they figured once the candles burned down, the house would go up in flames.
* * *
Unbeknownst to them, the Scotchgarding on the rug prevented the candles from igniting. According to Anita Sanchez, Blair Gilbert Scotchgarded the rugs every three or four months.
* * *
Fires are pretty common in home invasions, because the perps mistakenly believe it will burn away any kind of forensic evidence. Even if the house had gone up in flames, we would have been able to retrieve DNA. Hair, fibers, blood, fingerprints. It would have made our jobs a lot harder, but not impossible.
* * *
Terrell and Lenard light the candles then break a window to escape the house and peel out just as the sun is coming up.
* * *
Anita Sanchez comes in a little before eight. Blair and Farrah are dead. Miraculously, Malcolm, shot three times, is alive. Barely.
* * *
If she’d gotten there even five minutes later, Malcolm Gilbert would be dead.
* * *
She saves his life.
The Final Pieces
Lieutenant Dimitri Cora: As it turns out, we didn’t have to fly to New York to get Bridget. She came to us.
* * *
Lieutenant Sharon Donahue: Bridget came to town a few days after the murders. She headed straight for the house and immediately tried to gain access to her sister’s property, her personal items. But of course, it was all a part of the crime scene and was evidence, so she didn’t get anything. She starts sobbing about how she just wants her sister’s stuff, how her sister would want her to have it.
* * *
Gwen Majors: That didn’t surprise me at all. The only thing missing was her pulling up with a moving truck.
* * *
Jenny Valentine: Your sister’s been brutally murdered and your first thought is, “How can I get my hands on her stuff?” That’s who Bridget Johnson is.
* * *
Lieutenant Dimitri Cora: We got a hold of Lenard McKinney after his little sister called nine-one-one about the GSW he got during that final shootout at the Gilberts’.
* * *
So, we’ve got Terrell Winters and Lenard McKinney in custody, already knew that burner phone came from Bridget’s neighbor in Long Island City. It wasn’t too many steps to “She was the one to solicit her sister’s murder.” We just needed to connect a few more dots.
* * *
Lieutenant Sharon Donahue: When Bridget first got to town, she made a point of reaching out to us, offering her help, how she hoped we would catch whoever did this. She gave us her cell phone number, what hotel she was staying at. You know, don’t hesitate to call her anytime, day or night. We played along, but meanwhile, we were working around the clock, drawing a line to all of those dots.
* * *
Skye Stafford: How this all started was … Bridget got in touch with one of her drug dealer ex-boyfriends, tells him she’s looking for a guy in Chicago to take her sister out, hints there’ll be something in it for him down the line if he helps her with this. He connects her with his old cellmate, Traymond Vinson. Traymond and Bridget start to talk, but then he says he can’t do it on the day she wants it done, because he’ll be out of town. But he knows someone who can, and puts her in touch with the son of his ex-wife’s neighbor—Terrell Winters.
* * *
Sasha Reid: Over the years, Bridget would joke—usually after a few glasses of wine—that if Blair were out of the way, she could have Malcolm all to herself, that she could reclaim what was rightfully hers. It was always, “That’s my house she’s living in.” “That’s my husband she’s married to.” “That’s my life she’s living.” I didn’t think she was serious, of course, because she’d always kind of laugh while she was saying it.
* * *
The weekend of the murders, she showed up at my house, asked if I wanted to go to lunch. Insisted we go to lunch. Then she wanted to go shopping. She suggested going back to my place and ordering a pizza and watching a movie. Then she said she was too drunk to drive home and could she stay overnight. Then she wanted to go to brunch the next day. Finally, about three, I had to kick her out. She’d taken up my whole weekend. Now I know it was because she needed me to be her alibi.
* * *
Lieutenant Dimitri Cora: We traced a PayCoin account to Bridget where she had purchased a voice changer, real high-tech, real sophisticated stuff. Which is why Terrell always thought he was talking to a man.
* * *
Lieutenant Sharon Donahue: We didn’t tell Terrell who we suspected of hiring him. Instead, we get Bridget down to the station, just say we want to talk about the murders, that we think there’s a way she can help us. She was all too happy to oblige. Meanwhile, we had a search warrant for the hotel room and we seize that burner phone, that voice changer, her laptop. It was a goldmine of evidence.
* * *
We set that burner phone we confiscated down on the table. She doesn’t even flinch. We have Terrell call it from the other room and it lights right up. We tell her to answer. We cuff Terrell in the front, have him walk in, that phone pressed to his ear. The burner is still ringing. I answer it, put it on speaker, and Terrell’s voice fills the room. I think she might have had a heart attack.
* * *
She went berserk, just completely off the rails when we arrested her. I’ve seen a lot, but I thought she was going to spontaneously combust.
* * *
Isabelle Ryan: It’s been almost ten years and to this day, she insists she’s innocent, that she was framed.
* * *
Lieutenant Dimitri Cora: Bridget believed, truly believed, that all she needed to do to make her life perfect, was to get rid of her sister. Then, she would swoop in to dry the widower Malcolm’s tears, get him to fall in love with her and finally, finally, assume the mantle of the life she believed was rightfully hers.
* * *
Bridget Johnson would have done anything to be Bridget Gilbert. Anything. Even murder her sister.
* * *
Elena York: Perhaps the most horrific thing about all of this, is when Blair gave Bridget that twenty thousand dollars, she had no idea she’d handed over a down payment on her own murder.
Phone Conversation
8:30 a.m., CST Monday, April 3
Call between Terrell Winters and
Bridget Johnson. Terrell Winters is TW; Bridget Johnson is BJ
* * *
TW: Man, where the hell you been? I been calling you all weekend.
* * *
BJ: I told you I wasn’t going to be around while it was going down—
* * *
TW: We had some problems. A lot of damn problems.
* * *
BJ: Problems? What do you mean problems? What kind of problems?
* * *
TW: You didn’t tell me she was married to Malcolm Gilbert. Malcolm Fucking Gilbert. And that he was gonna be there.
* * *
BJ: Malcolm? Wait, Malcolm was at the house when you got there? He was supposed to be playing golf.
* * *
TW: (Scoffs). No, Malcolm wasn’t playing golf. Opened the motherfuckin’ door.
* * *
BJ: Are you—are you serious?
* * *
TW: Yeah, I’m serious! Then the damn daughter was there—
* * *
BJ: Wait—Farrah was there too? What?
* * *
TW: It was a damn cast of thousands up in there. I ring the doorbell, expecting Ol’ Girl was gonna answer, which is what you said would happen and damn Malcolm Gilbert is staring me in the face.
* * *
BJ: What did you do?
* * *
TW: I mean what could I do? We had to rush up in there and try and take care of business. You wasn’t answering the damn phone, so I just had to make a decision quick.
* * *
BJ: Okay, but you still haven’t told me what you did.
* * *
TW: I mean, we came in and he was talking about he’ll give me whatever cash he’s got on hand, which wasn’t nothin’. Then he says we’ll go to the bank for more money, but we get there and the damn bank was closed.
* * *
BJ: You still haven’t told me—
* * *
TW: Man, shut the hell up. I’m trying to tell you what happened.
* * *
BJ: (Sighs). All right, go on.
* * *
TW: So anyway, now we got to wait until Monday for the bank to open.
* * *
BJ: So you stayed there the whole weekend? With Malcolm, Blair, and Farrah?
* * *
TW: Yeah, we was all there, all six of us. Had the three of them tied up. All we had to do was make it to Monday—
* * *
BJ: Make it to—wait, you didn’t kill—I mean Malcolm’s not dead—
* * *
TW: I had to shoot him.
* * *
BJ: What? What? What do you mean you shot Malcolm? What?
* * *
TW: Yeah, I had to shoot him. Things got all the way out of hand. I had to do something.
* * *
BJ: You killed him? You killed Malcolm?
* * *
TW: I mean, yeah, he’s dead. He’s dead. We had to set the damn house on fire. It’s gonna be showing up on the news soon. Like real soon.
* * *
BJ: You stupid—
* * *
TW: Hey, I did what I had to do.
* * *
BJ: You weren’t supposed to do anything to Malcolm. You weren’t supposed to touch him.
