“What did she say? How did she phrase that?”
“She whispered something in his ear. I didn’t hear it, but…my dad got excited and called the police.”
“How do you know that she threatened to kill him?”
“Because my dad isn’t alive.”
Chapter Five
SUSAN’S DENIAL
As fifteen-year-old Gabriel Polk talked with the officers, his mother was in an adjacent interrogation room, giving a completely different account of the past forty-eight hours to sheriff’s investigators. Contra Costa Sheriff’s officer Kenneth Hansen had taken Susan into custody as soon as she answered the front door that night. He had been alerted over the police radio that she had long suffered from mental illness and could be in possession of a weapon. Not about to take any chances, he watched her cross the living room through the home’s expansive windows as he ascended the stone steps to the front of the house with his gun at the ready.
By the time Officer Hansen reached the landing, Susan was already standing in the doorway. Pulling a pair of handcuffs from his belt, he immediately closed them around her thin wrists and sat her down on a small wood bench just outside the front door. Directing his partner, Shannon Kelly, to keep a watch on the suspect while he inspected the property, Hansen left to locate and secure the pool house, where the victim was supposed to be. Flashlight in hand, he climbed the brick steps to the pool and adjacent cottage. After only a few minutes, he returned and apologetically advised Susan that her husband was dead, apparently from “unnatural causes.” He didn’t elaborate or reveal that he had just observed Felix Polk covered in blood on the floor of the pool house. Most of the blood appeared to be dry, an indication that he’d been dead for some time.
He noticed that Susan did not react to his pronouncement. She sat on the bench and said nothing. At one point, he removed her handcuffs and asked that she sign a consent form to search all four buildings on the property, which she did without hesitation.
It was after 11 PM when Officer Kelly escorted Susan Polk to the Field Operations Bureau in Martinez.
“Where is my son?” Susan asked repeatedly during the twenty-minute ride to Martinez. “Is he okay?”
Officer Kelly did not know the answer.
“Are you sure it’s my husband?” Susan prodded. “Did my son identify the body? Because his car isn’t here,” referring to Felix’s 1999 Saab.
Officers securing the Miner Road house had located four cars during their initial search of the property, but the Saab was not among them.
“Are you comfortable?” Officer Kelly inquired, thinking about the patrol car’s temperature, not the handcuffs around Susan’s wrists.
“I’m not too comfortable being in the back of a police car,” Susan responded. “My husband was killed, and I didn’t do anything.”
“Excuse me, do you have a blanket, or a jacket or something?” Susan asked Detective Mike Costa as he entered the sterile interrogation room some time after midnight on October 15. Dressed in shorts and a polo shirt, Susan felt chilled in the small, air-conditioned room, and Costa offered her an official police jacket.
The stocky, mustached detective had introduced himself to Susan earlier in the night at the crime scene, where he had been assigned lead investigator status. He had been on the force for twenty-six years and had responded to more than a hundred homicides since joining the Criminal Investigations Division. Now, having been briefed about Susan’s arrest and her statements to police while in route to the field operations office, he was prepared to question her.
“Okay. Like I said at the house, Susan, my name is Mike,” the investigator began, taking a seat at the room’s small round table. “I’m a detective with the Sheriff’s Office, okay? We are going to be looking at what happened to your husband tonight. I assume it’s your husband in the…what you guys call the pool house out there.”
“The guesthouse,” Susan corrected, wrapping the jacket with the official police emblem around her shoulders. “I didn’t hear any shots. I don’t own a firearm right now.”
“Okay, because you’re in custody here, and you’re not under arrest. I want you to understand that. But you’re not free to leave, okay. The law says I have to admonish you of your rights, okay.”
“Uh, huh.”
“Do you want to talk to me about what happened?”
“I do, and I am very, very tired,” Susan told the detective, unaware that she was being secretly recorded by a camera hidden in the ceiling.
“So am I. I haven’t been to bed all day either, but we have to do this.”
Susan looked directly at the officer. “What did happen?”
“Well, that’s what I’m hoping you can tell me.”
“I did not hear any gunshots, and I do not own a firearm.”
“Okay, you’ve been occupying the main house.”
“I didn’t see him all day today, so I don’t know.”
“Okay, what time did you wake up today?” the detective inquired.
“I woke up at around seven.”
“Seven AM, this morning?”
“Uh, huh. I took my son to school.”
“Which son?”
“Gabe.” Susan said, as she began retracing her steps during the day. She busied herself with housework and cooking after picking Gabe up from school on Monday afternoon. Around 8:30 that night, she took a bath.
“And during this time, didn’t you wonder where Felix was?”
“Yeah, I did wonder,” she replied dryly. “In fact, Gabe and I talked about it in the morning. Gabe thought they were going to a game together.”
Susan repeated that she hadn’t seen her husband at all that day. “And I didn’t see his car this morning.”
“Does he park it in the garage?”
“He parks it in the lower driveway.”
Detective Costa jotted something on a notepad. “How long have you guys been married?”
“It would be twenty-one years in December.”
“How long has the marriage not been going well?”
“Well, there have been times off and on throughout the marriage when I’ve brought up getting a divorce. And particularly five years ago, I said that I couldn’t see living with him any longer.”
“That was five years ago.” The detective pointed out that the couple was still together and had moved to a new house in Orinda just eighteen months earlier.
“Well, he said, you know, that he would never let me go and that kind of thing…. And he was really, it was just very difficult. I don’t have a job, and you know he is my source of income.
“And we do have some apartments, and we get income from those, too. But I just, you know, couldn’t, and I was very attached to him, too…. So, I mean it was like, you know, yeah, I wanted a divorce but then he would say things, and then it would be hard to go through with it.”
“So the past five years, it’s been particularly bad? Is that what you are saying?”
“Five years ago, it was very, very clear that I wanted a divorce.…And I backed off of it…pretty quickly.”
“Where is this marriage, as far as from a legal standpoint right now? The officers out there told me that you both have attorneys.”
“I fired my attorney, I don’t have an attorney right now.”
“How long ago?”
“Just a few days ago…. I had the house, I was given exclusive use of the house and custody of Gabriel…but then there were proceedings in juvenile court,” Susan explained. She claimed that initially she had been granted
