Life or Death (29 page)

The deputy called for backup, but their cruiser was spotted and both suspect vehicles took off at high speed.

Desiree reads the transcript of the radio communications, noting the names of the officers involved: Ryan Valdez and Nick Fenway were the first responders. A second cruiser, driven by Timothy Lewis, joined the pursuit.

The first radio message was timed at 20.13 hours on January 27.

Deputy Fenway:
1522, suspicious vehicle parked on Longmire Road near Farm Market 3083 West. Investigating.

Dispatcher:
Copy that.

Deputy Fenway:
We have an armored vehicle, licence plate November, Charlie, Delta, Zero, Four, Seven, Nine. It’s parked on the shoulder. It could be from that robbery.

Dispatcher:
Copy that. Any occupants?

Deputy Fenway:
Two, possibly three males. White. Medium build. Dark clothing. Deputy Valdez is trying to get closer … Shots fired! Shots fired!

Dispatcher:
Officers under fire. All units. The corner of Longmire Road and Farm Market Road West.

Deputy Fenway:
They’re getting away. In pursuit!

Dispatcher:
Copy that. All available units, all available units. Police pursuit in progress. Shots fired. Approach with caution.

Deputy Fenway:
Passing Holland Spiller Road. Seventy miles per hour. Light traffic. They’re still shooting … We’re coming up to League Line Road. Where are the cars?

Dispatcher:
Still five minutes away.

Deputy Lewis:
1522 where do you need me?

Deputy Fenway:
Come down League Line Road. You got spikes?

Deputy Lewis:
Negative.

Deputy Fenway:
The truck just crossed League Line Road. Still heading north.

Dispatcher:
We got eyes coming in from the west.

The pursuit continued for another seven minutes as the patrol cars and armoured truck reached speeds of up to ninety miles per hour. At 20.29 this happened:

Deputy Fenway:
He’s lost it! The truck is over! Sliding! Shit! I think he hit something.

Dispatcher:
Copy that.

Dispatcher:
Give me a location.

Deputy Fenway:
Old Montgomery Road. A quarter mile west of the RV Park. They’re shooting at us! Shots fired. Shots fired …

Deputy Lewis:
I’m coming.

Deputy Fenway:
(unintelligible).

Dispatcher:
Can you repeat that 1522?

Deputy Fenway:
Leaving the vehicle. Under fire.

(Four minutes of silence follow with the dispatcher trying to raise the officers.)

Deputy Fenway:
Three suspects down. We got a seriously wounded security guard and a vehicle on fire. Code 4.

Dispatcher:
Copy the code 4. We have fire and paramedics responding.

Desiree goes back and reads the first statements made by the responders and notices how often they used similar phrases and almost identical language to describe the events, as if they might have swapped notes or agreed on a story. It was common practice among law enforcement officers, who wanted to ensure that nobody jeopardised any subsequent trial. The pursuit ended when the armoured truck failed to take a bend and tipped over, slamming into a car, which burst into flames, killing the lone driver. Audie Palmer and the Caine brothers tried to shoot their way out.

According to their accounts, Deputies Fenway and Valdez were pinned down by heavy gunfire. They took cover behind their vehicle, returning fire, but were outgunned and vulnerable until Deputy Lewis arrived. He reversed his car into the line of fire, allowing his colleagues to take up better positions.

In total more than seventy rounds were fired by the three deputies. All three suspects were hit, two of them dying at the scene and a third being critically wounded. According to Dreyfus County Coroner Herman Willford, Vernon Caine had died from a gunshot to the chest and his younger brother Billy was hit three times – the leg, chest and neck. Both bled to death at the scene. Audie Palmer was shot in the head. The security guard Scott Beauchamp, who had been bound and gagged inside the truck, died from injuries sustained in the crash.

Desiree takes out five albums of crime-scene photographs and scans the images quickly before going back to study particular pictures more closely. Both police cars are visible, blocking the road, along with the twisted wreckage of the truck and burned-out car. The truck’s doors are bust open. Blood has pooled inside. Using the drawings and computer simulations, Desiree creates a mental diorama where she can place each of the ‘players’ at the scene.

There are gaps in the albums – more numbers than there are images. Either they were mislabelled or somebody has removed them. By 2004, most police cruisers in Texas were equipped with a camera and a hard-drive recording system. These could either be turned on by the officers or triggered automatically when the cruiser reached a certain speed. Newer systems record constantly and download via Wi-Fi whenever the cruiser returns to headquarters.

During disclosure, the defence had asked about the dashboard cameras and been told that the two cruisers didn’t carry such equipment. This detail snags in Desiree’s mind. She goes back through the photographs. The police cruiser driven by Fenway and Valdez is shown parked diagonally across the road. The windshield is shattered and holes are punched through the outer metal skin of the doors.

Using a magnifying app on her cell phone, she hovers over the image, focusing on the dashboard of the cruiser, noticing the telltale bump above the windscreen. A camera. Desiree jots down the code on the photograph, putting a question mark alongside it in her notebook.

Studying more of the images, she can see the wreckage of a burned-out car in the background. A charred body is just visible in the upturned wreck, which is so twisted and bent by heat and collision that it looks like a piece of abstract sculpture.

Desiree looks for details of the vehicle – a 1985 Pontiac, Californian plates. According to the autopsy report the driver was female, mid-twenties. The photographs show her charred corpse locked in a pugilistic pose with flexed elbows and clenched fists, caused by the shrinkage of body tissues and muscle due to the severe heat. There was no evidence of alcohol or drug use or childhood fractures.

Without a face or fingerprints, police had difficulty identifying the victim, which led to a nationwide search of DNA and dental databases. Later the hunt was expanded to include international agencies like Interpol and organisations dealing with undocumented immigrants. Desiree looks for a chain of ownership. The Pontiac 6000 was first sold by a dealer in Columbus, Ohio, in 1985, and resold twice more. The last registered owner was a Frank Aubrey in Ramona, southern California.

Desiree picks up her iPhone and calls a colleague in Washington. She and Neil Jenkins went through training together, but Jenkins had shown no desire to work in the field. He wanted a desk job at 935 Pennsylvania Avenue, preferably in the data surveillance section where he could eavesdrop on other people’s conversations.

True to form, Jenkins wants to shoot the breeze, but Desiree doesn’t have time.

‘I need you do a vehicle history search. It’s a Pontiac 6000, 1985 model. California plate 3HUA172.’ She rattles off the VIN number. ‘The car was destroyed in an accident in January 2004.’

‘Anything else?’

‘A woman was driving – see if they ever identified her.’

‘Is it urgent?’

‘Call me back.’

Desiree moves on to the security guard who died in the robbery. Scott Beauchamp was a former marine who did two combat tours in the Gulf and one tour in Bosnia. He resigned his commission in 1995 and had worked for Armaguard for six years. Police suspected an inside informant, but couldn’t link Beauchamp to the gang through phone records; however a fuel receipt put him in the same truck-stop diner as Vernon Caine a month before the hijacking. A waitress positively identified Beauchamp from a photograph, but couldn’t remember seeing the two men talking.

Desiree discovers a DVD at the bottom of the box. She crosschecks the evidence label with the list of exhibits. It’s Audie Palmer’s arraignment hearing.

She goes back to Mona, who looks surprised to see her.

‘You been here for six hours.’

‘I’ll still be here tomorrow.’

‘We close up in forty-five minutes, so unless you brought a sleeping bag…’

‘I need a DVD player.’

‘You see that room over there? You’ll find a computer inside. Here is the key. Don’t lose it. And you got till six or you come back tomorrow.’

‘Understood.’

Desiree fires up the computer and can hear the DVD spinning as the screen blinks to life. A fixed camera shows Audie Palmer in a hospital bed, his head swathed in bandages, tubes sticking from his nose and his wrists. She had already read the medical reports. Nobody had expected Audie to survive. Surgeons had to glue his skull together like a jigsaw puzzle, using fragments of bone and metal plates. Audie lay in a coma for three months, showing minimal brain activity for the first few weeks. Specialists debated whether to pull the plug, but Texas only executes people on death row, not when they’re brain-dead, because it might mean culling most of their politicians.

Even when Audie came out of the coma doctors doubted if he would ever talk or walk. He proved them wrong, but it was another two months before he was strong enough to be arraigned at a bedside hearing.

The footage shows a defence attorney, Clayton Rudd, sitting next to Audie, who is communicating by spelling out short messages on a borrowed Ouija board. The district attorney was Edward Dowling, now a state senator, who wore a surgical mask as though frightened of catching germs.

Before convening the arraignment, Judge Hamilton asked Dowling why the local DA’s office was prosecuting Palmer. ‘The defendant could have been tried under federal or state laws, your honour, but it’s my understanding that a conflict of interest arose,’ said Dowling, sounding deliberately vague.

‘What conflict of interest?’

‘A possible witness being a blood relative of a senior federal official,’ replied Dowling. ‘That’s why the FBI recommended the DA’s office handle it.’

Judge Hamilton looked satisfied and asked Mr Rudd if his client understood the purpose of the proceedings.

‘Yes, your honour.’

‘The man can’t state his full name for the record.’

‘He can spell it out.’

‘Mr Palmer, can you hear me?’ asked the judge.

Audie nodded.

‘I am going to arraign you today on charges that include three capital murder offences, hijacking a vehicle and second-degree vehicular homicide, is that clear?’

Audie groaned and squeezed his eyes shut.

‘These offences have maximum penalties that include the death sentence or life imprisonment without parole or any terms of years. Do you understand these charges and the maximum consequences?’

Slowly and deliberately, Audie moved his hand to the word ‘yes’ on the Ouija board.

Judge Hamilton turned to Dowling. ‘You can proceed.’

‘This is the matter of the people of Texas versus Audie Spencer Palmer. Case number forty-eight, docket six-hundred and forty-two.’

The DA took ten minutes to list the murder and robbery charges before outlining the prosecution case. Palmer was accused of conspiring with others to steal seven million dollars belonging to the US Federal Reserve.

Judge Hamilton spoke. ‘Sir, you have been charged with capital and felony offences. I must advise that you have certain entitlements. You have the right to be represented by an attorney and Mr Rudd has been appointed for you at public expense, but if you wish to hire your own attorney you may do so. Are you happy for Mr Rudd to represent you at today’s arraignment?’

Audie indicated yes.

‘Do you wish to enter a plea?’

Audie began spelling out a response, but Clayton Rudd reached across the board and stopped his trembling hand. ‘Let the record reflect that my client pleads not guilty,’ he said, glancing at Dowling, as though seeking his approval. He leaned back to Audie. ‘Best keep our powder dry, son.’

‘What about bail?’ the judge asked.

‘The state opposes bail,’ said Dowling, ‘These are capital crimes, your honour, and the money is still missing.’

‘My client isn’t leaving the hospital any time soon,’ replied Rudd.

‘Does he have family?’ asked the judge.

‘His parents and sister,’ said Rudd.

‘Any other ties to the community or significant assets?’

‘No, your honour.’

‘Bail is refused.’

The DVD ends. Desiree presses the eject button and slips the disk into the plastic sleeve, returning it to the box.

It was five more months before Audie Palmer came to trial at Dreyfus County Courthouse. By then he faced a different judge and Clayton Rudd had done a deal with the DA’s office, downgrading the capital murder charges to second-degree homicide in return for a guilty plea on all counts. Audie didn’t dispute any of the facts and declined to make a statement in mitigation.

The
Houston Chronicle
reported the verdict:

A 23-year-old man was yesterday convicted of armed robbery and second-degree murder for the botched 2004 hijacking of an armored truck that left a security guard and female motorist dead, along with two of his accomplices.

Judge Matthew Coghlan sentenced Audie Palmer to ten years in prison after he pleaded guilty to all charges, including the theft of $7 million in US currency, which was never recovered.

Before delivering his sentence, Judge Coghlan criticized District Attorney Edward Dowling for not bringing first-degree murder charges against Palmer for his role in the deaths. ‘These were capital offences and in my opinion today’s verdict is an insult to the law enforcement officers who risked their lives to bring this offender to justice.’