“No, no idea.”
“Do you know where your mom is in the house?”
“No, I don’t.”
“How do you know she’s still in the house?”
“Because I was just in the fuckin’ house,” the teen’s voice was beginning to waver, as though he was fighting back tears.
“Okay, where are you now?”
“I’m outside,” Gabe’s voice grew softer.
“Okay, what’s your mom’s name?”
“Susan. She’s got a mental illness.”
“What’s her last name?”
“Polk.”
“How old is your mom?”
There was no response.
“Gabe. Gabe? Are you still there?” The dispatcher asked.
The line went dead.
Gabriel’s attention had shifted to the sound of a door opening. He could tell it wasn’t coming from the main house. Peering around the carport, he was certain that it was his mother opening then closing the door to the guesthouse.
“Hey, did you see that?” she yelled up to him.
Gabe didn’t respond. He wanted to get as far away as possible. Bolting down the hill and onto Miner Road, he flagged down an arriving fire truck. Panting furiously, he remained with the firemen until police units arrived just after 10:15 PM.
Chapter Four
“SHE’S CRAZY”
It was after 1 AM on the morning of Tuesday, October 15, 2002, when Contra Costa Sheriff’s officers Jeff Moule and Jeffrey Hebel finally sat down with Gabriel Polk in a small interview room at the Field Operation’s Bureau in Martinez. They had left the teen alone in the tiny space for nearly thirty minutes, watching and recording his movements on the hidden video camera in the ceiling. Gabriel still had no shirt on.
The officers who would be interviewing him were members of the county’s Criminal Investigative Division (CID). They were responsible for follow-up investigation of all reported felony offenses in the 521 square miles of the unincorporated areas in the county. Before placing the visibly shaken teenager in a patrol car, they performed a gunshot residue test on him to determine whether he had recently discharged a firearm. The test was negative, and now they needed some answers from the distraught teen.
Gabe told the officers that his mother was “crazy and delusional,” and that she had tried to buy a shotgun after threatening Felix during the Montana trip. Although Gabriel was pointing the finger at his mother, the officers were reserving judgment. It was standard protocol to look at everyone in a homicide investigation, and the teenager was no exception. He was not under arrest, but he remained under scrutiny.
Officer Moule took the lead role in questioning the boy. He started with some background information.
“Right now, you are going to, what’s the name of the school you are going to?” The teen was sitting hunched in a chair with his elbows resting on a small round table; his head cradled in his hands. Without making eye contact, he explained that he was currently attending the Del Oro continuation school in Walnut Creek.
“Did you go to Del Oro the whole time you lived in Orinda?”
“No, I went to Miramonte,” the teen replied, referring to the city’s public high school.
“How come you dropped out?”
“My mom encouraged me to stay home from school,” Gabe replied in a mumble.
“Why did she want you to stay home from school?”
“She is crazy, and so she thought that all the teachers were like, against me, or something. And so I missed a month and a half at the end of the year.”
Taken aback, Officer Moule repeated the boy’s explanation. “She kept you home?”
“Yeah.”
“All right,” the officer said, shooting his partner a look. “Have you been in trouble with the law?”
“No,” Gabriel replied. Officers would later learn that the teen was not being completely truthful. While he had never been arrested, Gabriel, like his two older brothers, had been in his share of trouble over the years.
“Okay, you say your mom is crazy,” Officer Moule prefaced. “Tell me about your growing up, things that she has done that justify you saying that she is crazy.”
“My mom was fine up until about five years ago, when—I don’t really—I am not clear on what happened, but she had memories of her childhood. And her parents were real scumbags.”
Gabriel repeated Susan’s allegations about being abused as a child. “Apparently, at that time, and she was put on medication for a few months. And after that, I don’t know the name of that medication. But it was for, to stop her from being so delusional and paranoid,” the teen explained, while staring blankly at the table.
“I think her and my dad went to a bunch of psychologists and she eventually stopped taking the medication. And then, in a few years, she, like, directed all of her delusions, and paranoia toward my dad.
“And what my dad said is that she got him confused…with her father. So she had all this anger toward my dad, which was actually the anger toward her father, which was probably pretty scary for my dad. And so these last four years have been really, just, arguing, just at each other’s throats.”
“Five years ago, when she had these memories about her father, did she tell you herself?” Officer Moule asked.
“Yes.”
“She told you about that?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“You were about ten years old?”
Gabriel paused, and stared at the ceiling as if recalling the exchange. “No, I was older.”
“You were a little bit older?”
“And when was the last time she told you about it?”
“She told me about it up until today.”
The officer wore an astonished look. “She’s been telling you about it?”
“She told me about it up until today… not today, but like the present day, she talks about it often.”
Officer Moule again glanced at his partner, “So for the last five years she’s been acting out? Would you tell me what kind of stuff she does do?”
“Ah, it’s crazy shit,” Gabriel replied, readjusting his slender frame in the simple wood chair. “Do you want to know stuff she says about her father?”
“Sure, what does she say about her father?” Officer Moule prodded.
“Well my dad is like… I don’t know…. I don’t really know a lot of stuff,” Gabriel replied, before hesitating. “I don’t know too much about her family and everything.”
“What does your dad do for a living?”
“He is a psychologist.”
“Has he ever hit you, or anything like that?”
“No,” the teen answered.
“Did you ever see your dad hit your mom?”
Gabriel paused. “Um-um. I have seen my dad, like, slap my mom. It’s like, she’s totally out of her mind, and I could see a reason for it. She can act perfectly normal, too. And she does for the most part. But she just has a distorted reality.”
“You use some pretty good-sized words for a fifteen-year-old man.”
“Mm-hmm.”
