by Rick Mofina
“And you were at the party?” Elsen said.
“Yeah, a lot of people were there. Blake and his dad were giving tours inside the RV. It was cool.”
“You notice anything unusual at all?”
“Well, there were these two guys, strangers, a little older. I think they arrived late,” Zeke said. “Arlen and I thought they were college guys, or friends of the parents, but they were hanging around Blake.”
“You get names, anybody know them?” Elsen asked.
“No, but later the weirdest thing happened. The party ended. I left. I was a bit loaded, and I forgot my phone at Blake’s house. When I went back for it everybody was gone, but Blake was in the driveway standing by the RV with one of the guys. I think Blake was kinda shocked to see me because one of the other guys was on his back on the ground under the RV, looking at it with his flashlight, like a mechanic or something.”
“Where exactly under it?” Elsen said.
“Oh man.” Zeke crossed his arms on his chest. “The back, definitely the rear.”
“What was he doing there?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re sure you saw him under the RV?” Elsen said.
“Well, I was drunk. But I’m pretty sure.”
“How did the strangers react to you?”
“Oh, well, like nothing. They were quiet and I just said great party, cool RV. Then Blake came out with my phone and put his arm around me and says something like those guys are thinking about renting an RV too, and I said that’s cool and went home.”
* * *
“Gambling and guys acting suspiciously under the RV,” McDowell said from behind the wheel as she followed the GPS to the DoubleTree downtown.
“An interesting picture’s emerging.” Elsen watched the lights flow by.
“But does it tie in to Riley?” McDowell kept her eyes on the traffic.
“Deeper layers of the onion,” Elsen said.
* * *
After checking in, dropping their bags in their rooms and making quick personal calls to Las Vegas, they went down to the hotel’s restaurant. It was nearly empty. They got a table in a far corner where McDowell ordered a hamburger, Elsen a club sandwich. They’d brought tablets and notebooks. They were making notes and discussing leads when McDowell’s phone rang.
“McDowell.”
“Emery Moore. I’ve got something new for you guys on John Marshall. Sending you both some documents now.”
“It’s Moore,” McDowell said to Elsen as her tablet and Elsen’s pinged with a notification. Back on her phone: “Got them, Emery, thanks. Anything on the search for Caleb Clarke? Or Riley?”
“Still looking. I’ve booked an interview room for you guys for tomorrow at our place,” Moore said. “I figure after reading this, you’re going to want it. Oh, and Denny Winslow got back to me. He’ll come in tomorrow to talk to you about the drowning case of Marshall’s wife and daughter. You set it up. I’ll send you his number.”
“Thanks.”
The documents included a confidential, sealed nondisclosure contract between John Marshall and his former employer, SoCal SoYou. The other records outlined Marshall’s admissions and details of his actions.
Reading through it all, McDowell bit her bottom lip knowing they wouldn’t have gotten these records without a tip to generate a warrant. She lifted her head to Elsen for his reaction.
“Well,” he said after reading and finishing off the last quarter of his sandwich. “We’ve got a tangle of leads pointing in all directions.”
“I’ll call John Marshall,” McDowell said, “to set up interviews with him and Blake tomorrow at San Diego police headquarters. We’ll talk to Winslow first, though.”
A degree of sadness rippled over Elsen as he paged through his tablet, stopping at a picture of Riley Jarrett.
“What is it, Dan?”
“I’m wondering if we haven’t already lost this one, Michelle.”
“What do you mean?”
“Looking at the evidence and thinking, is it Rykhirt all along? Is she dead, like the Garcia girl, or is it something entirely different that we missed, something right in front of us?”
DAY 5
Sixty-Seven
San Diego, California
The next morning McDowell and Elsen met Denny Winslow in the coffee shop at San Diego police headquarters.
With his mustache blending into his stubbled, tanned face and hair spiraling every which way, McDowell pegged him for a guy who lived at the beach. After the initial hellos and getting of coffee, Winslow slid on his glasses and got down to business.
“After Emery called I pulled together some notes for you.” Winslow scrolled through his phone. “So the Marshalls go out in the bay near Point Loma when the storm hits them and their boat capsizes. They go in the water. Lana and Courtney Marshall drown. Coast Guard and Harbor Police deploy, recover the bodies.” Winslow tapped his screen. “Harbor Police bring us in because of a tip about John having large policies on his family and financial problems. The medical examiner rules the cause to be accidental drowning but tells me both victims had bruising to the upper body.”
“Bruising?” Elsen said. “That raises a flag.”
“It did. But the ME says that while the bruises could’ve been blunt trauma, they were consistent with injuries both victims might have sustained being slammed against the boat in the storm, trying to hang on.”
Winslow said that after investigating no evidence of a crime could be found. The case was closed and insurance was paid to Marshall.
“I’ll give you all the notes I have and my insurance association contact who I worked with on the Marshall case.”
“Thanks, Denny.”
“You know,” Winslow said. “We can always reopen the drowning investigation if there was reason.”
“Is there reason?” McDowell said.
“Well, I learned this morning from my insurance guy that after John Marshall remarried, he took out policies on Grace and Riley Jarrett with even larger death benefits than those for his first wife and daughter.”
The investigators took a moment absorbing that information.
“Something you guys should bear in mind when you talk to John and his son today,” Winslow said. “In fact, I suggested to Emery what room you should use for John.”
“Why?”
“To gauge his reaction.”
Sixty-Eight
San Diego, California
The air in the room was cold with a trace of disinfectant. Not much bigger than a jail cell, it had a single table with two chairs on one side, and one chair on the other.
McDowell motioned for John to take the single chair. Elsen closed the windowless door and they sat across from him. His chair was bolted to the floor and had a cuff bar, but he wasn’t handcuffed.
John knew this room. He’d been here before when he was questioned about Lana’s and Courtney’s deaths.
Why bring me to this room?
“Are you going to be okay, John?” McDowell said.
He swallowed. “Did you find Riley? Did you find Caleb? Have you got something?”
“Not yet,” Elsen said. “But before we go on we have to remind you that you’re still under Miranda and our conversation is being recorded.”
John’s jaw tightened. “Am I under arrest?”
“No. We need to clear up a few things,” Elsen said.
“What things?”
McDowell consulted her tablet. “John, you told us the reason you’re leaving San Diego is because of a new opportunity, a better job with a bigger company in Pittsburgh.”
“Yes, so?”
“But you misled us,” Elsen said. “The fact is you’re fleeing San Diego. You were fired from SoCal SoYou because over several years you had siphoned nearly a hundred thousand
dollars from corporate accounts into your own.”
All the blood drained from John’s face.
“We have records and we’ve made calls to executives, John,” McDowell said. “Wanting to avoid negative publicity because of an upcoming stock offering, they didn’t charge you. Instead, you were fired under a secret contract you signed binding you to repay the full amount or face legal action. And they provided you with a carefully worded but positive letter of reference. Isn’t that true, John?”
He ran his hand through his hair.
“The records indicate you were facing serious personal financial stress as the cause for the embezzlement,” Elsen said.
John said nothing.
“Look where you are, John,” Elsen said. “Look at your tragic history. We know what you do when you’re under financial stress.”
John looked at Elsen.
“You get desperate. You take risks, don’t you? Because it comes down to a matter of survival for you, doesn’t it?”
“Are you involved in Riley’s disappearance for financial gain?” McDowell said.
John’s eyes filled with tears.
“Because the way we see it,” Elsen said, “you left San Diego because of financial problems and you needed to do something about it, didn’t you?”
John’s knee started bouncing in his chair.
“John,” McDowell said, “is there something you want to tell us? Because if you want to cooperate, now’s the time.”
The stark white walls seemed to be closing in on John, and he squeezed his eyes shut.
Sixty-Nine
San Diego, California
John took a deep, quaking breath.
Elsen tilted his head, assessing him. McDowell’s brow wrinkled with concern while they waited. Then John responded to what they had uncovered.
“I don’t see what this has to do with Riley. My God, you should be—”
“Stop right there,” Elsen said. “You were facing a large debt load before your wife and your daughter were killed. Correct?”
John said nothing.
Elsen continued. “The medical examiner said there was bruising on their bodies but could not say conclusively if the injuries were a result of blunt trauma before they went into the water, or from being slammed against the overturned boat.”
John blinked.
“Your insurance policies on Lana, Courtney and your boat resulted in you receiving a total of eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars, but you lost much of it through risky investments, didn’t you?”
Tears rolled down John’s face.
“When you remarried,” Elsen said, “you took out life insurance policies on Grace and Riley. In the event of Riley’s death, you’ll receive one point five million dollars.”
John raised his face to the ceiling.
“Before you left San Diego,” Elsen said, “you were facing huge financial stress and now Riley’s missing and could be dead.”
“You told us that after your family visited Las Vegas, you’d planned to stop at the Grand Canyon,” McDowell said.
“Were you planning to have an accident there too, John?” Elsen said. “A tragic fall, for example? It could work out for you financially, like the last time. Couldn’t it, John?”
Elsen’s chair scraped as he leaned closer to John. “Are you involved in Riley’s disappearance?”
Biting his bottom lip, John shook his head, the veins in his neck pulsing under his skin. “Why’re you doing this? What about Rykhirt, the guy you believe abducted Riley? What about Caleb? Where is he? Why’re you wasting time with these ridiculous theories?”
Elsen didn’t flinch. “We’re not ruling out anything. We’re pursuing everything and everybody. Do you know how many times in an investigation something wild emerges then police are criticized for having missed it?”
John said nothing.
“You want us to find Riley, don’t you, John?”
“You know the answer.”
“Don’t you want us to exhaust every avenue, leave no stone unturned in our effort to find Riley?”
“Yes, but within reason.”
“Within reason?” Elsen nodded. “And who gets to decide what’s within reason? You? That would be like you investigating yourself, wouldn’t it?”
John didn’t respond.
“Why did you lie to us, John?” McDowell asked.
“Were you planning for Grace and Riley to have an accident?” Elsen said. “The same way your first wife and daughter did? Were you planning to stage a ransom scam? Did you transport drugs? Is Blake involved? What did you do, John?”
John shook his head.
“We’re going to hold you here awhile,” Elsen said.
“On what grounds?”
“Possible charges for obstructing our investigation.”
“This is wrong!” John covered his face with his hands, his mind speeding back to that night...the wind, the rain, the ocean rising and falling as he cries into the dark: Hang on! God, please, hang on!
Seventy
Nevada
Earlier that morning, with cables running from their oversize laptops to the security camera system of the Silver Sagebrush, the experts pressed on.
After Riley Jarrett had disappeared from the complex, Travis Quinn, the surveillance chief, and Cliff Lawton, a digital forensic specialist with the Las Vegas police, had been working on potential remedies to recover lost footage.
The problem appeared to have happened when Sagebrush people were updating the software at the same time they’d had a system crash. Quinn was unsure if it was a signal strength, or corruption issue, but most Sagebrush cameras were not communicating correctly. Most surveillance points had not been storing recordings.
Again and again they checked the power supply, the hardware setup and internet connectivity. They fault-checked the wiring of the entire system to determine why there was a loss during file transfer, and they looked at possible hard drive corruption. They ran various recovery programs, all without success.
Their fear was that the lost footage, which should have been archived, had been deleted. Quinn and Lawton knew that deleted files could be recovered, but if those files were overwritten and erased, then they were gone. Still, if the hard drive was not completely overwritten, then there was a slim chance they could recover footage.
This morning, Lawton proposed trying new advanced recovery software that the Las Vegas police had obtained.
“This might be our Hail Mary pass,” Lawton said, referring to a last chance desperation play in football.
It took several minutes to run the recovery software before Quinn began to search for the files. He entered the same commands that had been fruitless in the past, while he and Lawton eyed the monitors. One of them came to life, then another.
“What the—?” Quinn said. “I don’t believe it!”
Static-filled images appeared of people in the main lobby of the Sagebrush. Picture clarity increased and diminished, as if filtered through a snowstorm. But in patches of clarity they saw a teenage girl wearing a shirt with the stylized Friends logo from the TV show. The sequence showed a white man walking right up to the girl.
“That’s Riley and Rykhirt,” Quinn said.
The recording continued but it was indistinct.
“We’ve never seen this stuff before,” Lawton said. “It’s working. We’ll have to clean it up. That’ll take time. But finally we’re on the right track.”
“Good, good, now we’ll see what really happened,” Quinn said.
Seventy-One
San Diego, California
Blake’s heart was beating faster. He’d never been to San Diego police headquarters and now he was on the fourth floor, sitting in a sofa chair in a carpeted room lit with lamps. It was a soft interview room used mostly for assault vic
tims or witnesses to convey that they were safe and hadn’t done anything wrong. McDowell and Elsen were in the two sofa chairs across from him.
Blake took stock of the room, the vinyl bunched in the spot where his fingers gripped the arms of his chair. The detectives noticed.
“Did you find Riley?” Blake asked. “Why do you want to talk to me?”
“No, we still haven’t located her,” McDowell said, “but we need your help following up on some things. Are you comfortable?”
Blake shrugged.
“We have to inform you that you’re still under Miranda and our conversation is being recorded,” Elsen said.
“Are you arresting me or something? Do I need a lawyer?”
“You’re not under arrest and you are not charged with anything,” McDowell said. “We need to clarify a few things.”
“Okay.” Blake licked his lips.
A long moment passed with the detectives staring at Blake until he grew uneasy, his eyes darting between them before Elsen spoke.
“We understand that you gamble online.” Another silence passed then Elsen continued. “And that you may have run up a significant debt.”
Blake’s eyes widened slightly and his face whitened.
“And,” Elsen said, “on the night of the party you were seen with two people. One of them was looking under the RV in the same area where our dog detected the presence of narcotics.”
Blake’s mouth opened slightly.
“We need the truth, Blake,” McDowell said.
He was silent, staring but seeing nothing. Then tiny beads of sweat formed on his forehead.
“Blake, are you in any way involved in Riley’s disappearance?” McDowell asked.
His shoulders dropped. The moment he’d dreaded had come and his chin crumpled. “Yes.”