Christine Paolilla shrugged. Then she said: "Uh-huh," as if what Harris had just spent minutes explaining had been spoken to her in Swahili. It was as if she had not understood one word.

It was difficult to keep Christine focused on one particular subject because the signs of feeling the heavy burden of having murdered two of her best friends, and needing to talk about it, had begun to wear her down. She'd drift off, stare at the wall or floor, and Harris would have to say, "Hey, stay with me here, Christine . . . come on."

Harris brought up the caliber of the weapons.

Ignorantly, Christine said she had no idea what a caliber was.

Harris became excited: "How would he (your husband) know the caliber of guns used in the murders?"

Christine found herself backed into a corner. She sat for an extended period of silence, thinking. Then, suddenly, "I know how," she said with excitement, as if aha, I figured it out! "Because we had"-she paused, looking puzzled-"right, yes, we talked about it. And it was . . . it was something that had come on the news. That nothing had been found yet. And then I went on the website."

She was all over the place. As she spoke, Harris dropped his head, saying with the gesture: Give me a freakin' break here. . . . Do better than that! But he figured he'd amuse her sensibilities and play along for a few beats, asking, "One of the websites?"

"That's how he knows."

"How does he know about [the caliber of the weapon]?" Harris wondered, making a point that the caliber of the weapons used was never mentioned in the news reports or on the website.

"I believe the website told what guns they were."

"Okay, okay, how would he know this fact-that Rachael was in a crawling position, had a cell phone by her, and y'all believed she was dialing nine-one-one, and that it was a good thing that you went back in there?"

Only a person in that room with those dead and dying kids could have known those facts as Justin Rott had explained them.

Christine seemed shocked by this revelation. Her appearance conveyed: How did you find that out?

"I never, never said that to anybody," she said.

"And how would that person [now referring to one of the tipsters] be able to relay certain details," Harris said, ignoring her answer. Then Harris tried another one of his tactics specifically designed for this situation: remove the blame from the suspect, place it on something other than her conscience. "But the good thing about that is that person says that you were sick to your stomach, and you didn't want to do this. You felt like you were forced into it. You didn't want to do it. And then when it happened, okay, I think you know what I think happened. I think Chris did what he did and you did run up the driveway, okay? And I think that you went into the house and saw what he did, and you went, 'Oh, gosh,' that . . . he's running behind you and then you see him make sure that they're all dead, and then he looks at you and he says, 'Now you're in this with me!' And he manipulates your mind that way. You see what I mean?"

Harris continued for another few minutes, doing his best to persuade Christine that she wasn't the one to blame, that it was Snider, the "psycho bastard," Harris called him, who had manufactured this entire crime.

Christine wouldn't bite: "I was never in that house."

Harris asked what she was wearing that day-if she could recall that simple fact.

Walgreens work clothes, she said.

"Did you have anything on your head?"

"I'm feeling sick right now," she said.

"Did you have anything on your head?"

Harris was losing her. Christine wanted a nurse. Her skin was pasty, white as vanilla ice cream. She had dark bags and half circles underneath her eyes, but she was alert and coherent. She knew what was being asked of her and, in turn, responded by asking intelligent questions.

It was 4:45 P.M. Harris could see his subject was breaking down. Her head kept falling to one side.

"Can I see a nurse?"

"Let's take a break, okay, and let's get you . . . get you together."

Christine asked for a nurse again.

Harris explained that someone would be summoned to have a look at her. "Take some water," he said; then he got up and walked out of the room.

With Harris gone, Christine lay back in her chair, curling herself up in that yellow blanket, hugging it tightly, her head falling to one side. She moaned some, and looked uncomfortable. Totally still, Christine just about passed out-that is, until she heard voices outside the room, which startled her awake. She sat up, listening. Then she dropped her head on her right shoulder and passed out.

A door slammed in the background. More voices. One of them was Justin Rott's. This piqued Christine's attention.

Harris barged into the room. "Look," he said, standing over his suspect, pointing at Christine angrily, "I'd like to take you back to Houston so you can be closer to your mom, but I can't do that if you're going to be all [messed] up and gonna pass out and all that other [stuff], okay?"

Harris was angrier now than he had been since they began. He was frustrated and tired and quite unimpressed with the line of crap Christine was giving him.

She looked at him and appeared to be startled by his demeanor. With her image facing the camera directly, it was easy to calculate the toll the drugs had taken on Christine Paolilla; she appeared skeletal and ghostly, ashen-faced, having been deprived of any natural nutrition or fluids. She looked weak and tarnished, a fragment of her old self.

"I'm gonna be sick," Christine said, ". . . if I could just see a nurse and she could just give me something, not like drugs or anything, but . . . I'm not saying I'm gonna OD or anything. If I could just see a nurse."

Justin Rott was outside the door. Harris walked back out and spoke to him. Christine heard her husband's voice and brightened up; some red color even washed back into her face. She leaned forward in her chair to get a closer look outside the door.

The voice got closer and louder. Harris walked in front of the box door and Christine could hear him clearly saying, "Hold on . . . hold on . . . hold on . . . okay" to someone in the hallway. Then Harris walked back into the interview room and, pointing at her, addressed Christine: "Come here."

"Okay," she said, getting up languidly.

"Come here!" Harris said sternly, with force, telling her to hurry the hell up.

She got up and walked out into the hallway.

"Stand right here," Harris told her. Then to Justin Rott: "Tell her."

Justin sounded as though he had been crying. He said something none of them could understand.

"This is her life," Harris said with force. "You're worried about your stuff? This is her life!"

They didn't speak.

Harris looked at Justin: "Did you tell us the details of what happened?"

Justin spoke, but Harris couldn't understand him.

"Tell her to tell the truth."

"Just tell the truth, hon," Justin said after a long pause.

"Go on back in there," Harris ordered Christine, who wanted to stay in the hallway with her husband. "Come on, go back in there. . . . Go back in there. . . . Go back in. . . . Sit down."

Harris closed the door behind Christine after she sat. He stood in the hallway with Rott. Christine walked sluggishly over toward her chair and leaned on it without sitting. Then she turned and walked back to the door, placing an ear up to it so she could hear what they were talking about. Could this have been Harris's plan the entire time?

Harris was reading Justin Rott the riot act, finishing many of his sentences with, "Do you understand that?" They were close to arguing. "Here's the problem," Harris said at one point, laying out the situation for Rott, who had by then given HPD everything his wife had ever said to him about the murders.

As they talked back and forth, Christine opened the door slightly and said, "Sir?"

"What?" Harris said sharply, letting her know she was interrupting.

"Can you please, I need a nurse."

TJ McCorvey was there, too, out in the hallway. "Do what?" he asked.

"I need a nurse," she said again.

"What?" McCorvey said.

She said it again.

"She needs to see a nurse," McCorvey repeated to Harris.

Christine doubled over and held her stomach: "Please, I'm bleeding. I'm bleeding."

"We're getting one," McCorvey said as Christine seemed to rock back and forth on her heels while holding her stomach. "Just sit down in there."

"I love you, Justin," Christine said, changing her tone.

"Just sit down."

"Please . . . I can't move . . . please." She held on to the door.

"Sit down!" someone yelled.

"I can't move from this spot," Christine claimed.

"We'll get you some help," Harris said.

"She said she can't move," McCorvey told him.

"I'm bleeding," Christine repeated, not saying from where she was bleeding.

McCorvey stepped into the room, picked up her chair, and placed it over by the door. Then he told her to sit down. Help was on the way.

"I'm bleeding. . . . I'm bleeding."

CHAPTER 54.

CHRISTINE PAOLILLA DID not give herself up during that first interview with Detective Brian Harris. He tried. But Christine had an unwavering unwillingness to come clean regarding her role in the murders. On top of that, Harris later admitted that he had probably screwed up the interview.

"Yeah," he said, "I should have gotten together with Tommy [TJ McCorvey] when I left the room, before I spoke with Justin Rott. I should have said, 'Tommy, this is what I want to do. . . . This is what Christine is saying. . . . What do you think?' Tommy was down the hall. I thought Justin would come down and say, 'I told them everything,' but that kind of backfired. I should have had Tommy do it (convince Rott to speak with Christine). Justin looked at me like, 'Who the heck are you?' Once he heard Christine say, 'I love you, Justin,' that was it. It wasn't a mistake 'casewise,' we still had plenty of chances left, but tactically, yes, a mistake on my part was made. I should have gotten together with Tommy."

Christine was taken to the hospital because at some point her addiction to heroin and cocaine was going to catch up with her body; and then after a period of detoxification, she was cleared by doctors to be extradited back to Houston. But HPD could not take her without first putting Christine in front of a San Antonio magistrate. This was not going to be all that simple, once San Antonio law enforcement got involved. Ego runs through police departments like water in the pipes; some officers feel the need to flex their administrative muscle when the chance arises. Still, Brian Harris, Breck McDaniel, and TJ McCorvey were going to bring Christine back with them, one way or another. To make the trip easier, Harris ordered a small state police plane to meet them at a nearby airstrip-that is, as soon as they could get Christine in front of that judge and get the proper paperwork in order.

At the hospital Christine was feeling better. She said she was willing to talk; there were a few things she wanted to share.

Harris hoped she was finally ready.

After being asked, Christine explained that she thought Chris Snider had put the guns "back in his dad's safe."

She next brought Snider's sister, whom she did not name, into the picture, saying that she believed Brandee had had something to do with providing the guns to her brother. After that, she went into a story about how Snider had said he "pulled the gun on them and, like, they started arguing." He later told her that he had gotten into a fight with Marcus.

Harris knew this was an incredibly weak attempt at trying to place the blame on her co-conspirator, for the simple reason that if Chris and Marcus had gotten into a fight, Adelbert would have backed his cousin up. It was ridiculous. Pathetic. But typical.

Harris allowed Christine to talk, nonetheless. Sooner or later, he knew, she was going to trip herself up.

Christine continued to paint a picture of Chris Snider killing the four while she waited in the car. She said she did talk about the crime to some friends, but not in any detail. All she had shared must have come from what she had seen or heard on the news. And from there came a series of excuses and explanations as to how and why Christine Paolilla knew what she knew but had never gone into the house with Snider.

She said that she and Snider had fought in her car over the drugs he stole from the house ("weed"). She asked him to get rid of the drugs, but he refused.

She said he showed "no human emotion" or "sympathy" for what he did after he admitted killing the four. And this made her sick to her stomach.

She said he liked to correct the news when a story came on by saying, "That's not how it happened." This also made her uncomfortable.

She said he was always trying to "show off" and brag about what he had done, like he was some kind of "playa," now that he had killed four people.

After that, she and Harris talked about the wigs Christine liked to wear (black and auburn).

They talked about her being in rehab and meeting Justin Rott.

They talked about how Christine felt that Snider had threatened her life and how he had told her routinely that she was just as guilty as he was because she had driven him to commit the murders.

They talked about the fact that, according to Christine, Snider said he would kill her parents (or have someone else do it) if she ever went to the police.

Harris eased his way into saying, in not so many words, that Christine was full of nonsense. Harris lied to her, saying that they had spoken to Chris Snider and he had placed her in the house with him. Harris wanted to know how that was possible, and what did Christine think of Snider's accusation.

So Christine went through the details she had given Harris the day before, again describing how she had waited in the car outside the Rowell home.

Harris didn't let up. He explained to Christine that everybody carried DNA around with them and that it was easy to leave a DNA sample, haphazardly and unknowingly, wherever you went.

She said she understood.

Harris asked, "How would we explain your DNA inside that house?"

"Well, I've been to that house before."

"Uh-huh . . ."

"Like, you know, I was there for her birthday, and, you know, people are always at her house-"