Placed there.
Donna Weyland was looking at me. Everyone was.
The house had gone silent.
For a split second, her face changed, theatrical terror given way to cold analysis.
A face I’d seen before. Cold-eyed, flat, barely suppressed hostility.
Portrait on a collection of mugshots.
I said, “Hi, Trisha.”
Her shoulders jerked as she resisted reflexively. That elicited Reed and Binchy’s reflexes: gripping her harder.
Milo took his cuffs out.
Like a virus taking hold, cop suspicion had set in and everyone knew it.
Four sets of eyes settled on Donna Weyland a.k.a. Trisha Bowker.
She was inert for a moment, shuffling through a mental Rolodex for the right facial expression.
First came a pout, bizarrely girlish. Even as it settled, she knew it wouldn’t work and switched the channel to a pathetic mewl.
Milo cuffed her. She sagged as if trying to slip the restraints. Reed and Binchy held her fast.
Milo turned his back on her and assessed Mearsheim’s body.
He spieled the Miranda warning, not even trying to sound interested.
With nowhere to go, but it’s either fight or flight. Donna/Trisha was in no position to fight.
“It…was…I’m…so…sorry…please.”
That didn’t work. She spat in Milo’s face.
* * *
—
Once it’s over, some criminals check out mentally. Trisha/Donna cursed and kicked and screamed as Reed and Binchy removed her.
Milo allowed himself some rapid breathing.
When he stopped, new sounds asserted themselves through the thin walls of the cheesy little house.
Low-pitched barks. Muffled but insistent.
What might’ve passed as an asthmatic dog protesting.
Then the noise began to sound human. Binchy came back, saying, “Moe took her in.”
Milo and I were already moving toward the sound. Front of the house, the south side.
The garage.
* * *
—
The space was accessible through an empty service porch that reeked of bug killer and sported small heaps of dead roaches. No bolt on the interior door: a turn lever that Milo’s gloved hand flipped.
Dim garage.
One bare bulb screwed to a socket in the rafters.
Parked side by side, a black Ford pickup and a black Camaro.
A chair was positioned between the vehicles. Moth-eaten love seat from another era.
The figure in the chair bucked and screamed through a duct-taped mouth. Body and limbs were pinioned to the chair by more tape.
The eyes above the gag were flickers of terror.
Male captive, barely able to see through swollen lids, unsure, now, if life had gotten better or worse.
Pipe-stem arms. Stringy hair, blond, matted, greasy. His gray T-shirt was blood-caked. Brown stains on his jeans coexisted with more blood—amoebic blotches of red. A crusted yellow circle marked the concrete near his bare feet where urine had settled and dried. The garage stank of gasoline and cleaning fluid and more insect poison and shit.
Several feet in front of the chair, near the rear bumper of the Camaro, lay a bloody ball-peen hammer.
The captive’s right hand was a mangled blob.
Milo rushed toward him. “Police, it’s okay, it’s okay.” He began removing the tape-gag as the boy in the chair convulsed.
Binchy’s eyes had shifted to a corner of the garage. He pointed. “Oh, Lord.”
A band saw, just beyond the nose of the pickup.
As Cory Thurber’s parched, swollen lips were liberated, he made a gagging sound and drooled and struggled to speak. As Milo began freeing his arms, he managed a whimper that began feebly and continued to lose power.
Barely audible: “Heheh-hehehllllp me!”
Milo said, “It’s okay, son, you’re safe, just hold on.”
Once you know what to look for, collecting evidence is a whole new game.
Within ten hours of Trisha Bowker’s arrest, the earliest link between her and Paul Mearsheim was found. The couple had gotten together nine years ago, when Mearsheim had worked as a computer consultant for a school district in Massachusetts and Bowker had served as a teacher’s aide. Shared amorality had been the relational glue.
Both had used sanitized bios to obtain the public-sector positions, a pattern repeated as they traveled westward, Mearsheim’s résumé leaving out several dismissals by financial firms due to “irregularities,” Bowker’s criminal record omitted.
Helping that along was the adoption of a new joint identity: the pseudo-married duo of Paul and Donna Weyland. Bowker, with solid talents as an identity thief, had usurped the personae of a couple who’d perished in a 1958 New Jersey house fire. Claiming matrimony had been a cinch; no one ever bothered to check marriage licenses.
For years, the Weylands had combined gainful employment at various public and private schools with illicitly obtained government handouts and on-the-side schemes, mostly slip-and-fall insurance fraud.
From everything Milo could tell, their first homicide had been Jacqueline, Cory’s mother, a widow enticed into what she thought was legal marriage with Paul as he continued to spend fun time with Bowker.
No murders between Jackie and the brutalities of the current case surfaced, but he was still looking.
The search for biological evidence was complete within forty-eight hours, bloodstains and shreds of flesh in the teeth of the band-saw blade at the Marquette garage matched to Hargis Braun’s DNA. Shotgun cartridges found in a kitchen cabinet were consistent with fragments embedded in the ruins of Braun’s face. The garage floor had been washed with ammonia and insecticide but luminol glowed heavily in one corner of concrete and several feet of the tar-paper walls above. Techs had also discovered blood specks in the bed of the pickup truck and two errant hairs matching Braun’s in the hallway of the still-being-processed Evada house.
Also in the Marquette home were a pair of crotchless leopard-print women’s panties, several wigs including a brunette hairpiece whose strands matched those taken from the A-frame by Milo, and a silver-filigree necklace set with amethysts.
The necklace was confirmed as the one sold to Chet Corvin by Bijan Ahmani, owner of Snowbird Jewelers in Arrowhead Village. Ahmani also picked Donna/Trisha’s brunette-wigged photo from a six-pack lineup, as did Briana Muldrew, assistant manager of the San Bernardino Hampton Inn.
Presented with what Milo chose to share of all that, Trisha Bowker, the DNA-confirmed wearer of the bracelet and the wig, was “enthusiastic” about talking to him, per her public defender, a tired-looking fifty-year-old named Hollick Wilde. Initially surprised by my presence in the County Jail interview room, Wilde recovered and said,“Great! This is at the core a psychological situation. The more insight, the better.”
Bowker read a prepared statement. As she recited, Hollick Wilde smiled with self-satisfaction. That and stilted legalese made clear who’d put it together.
Simple theme: Paul Mearsheim, bad. Trisha, scared and intimidated, an often-unwilling confederate.
She described how Mearsheim had shotgunned and mutilated Braun in the Marquette garage, wrapped the body in thick plastic sheeting, bound it with duct tape, then transported it back to Evada Lane in the pickup. There, shielded by darkness and the quiet of the cul-de-sac, he’d “transferred the object” to the Corvin house.
Milo said, “Why there?”
Trisha Bowker seemed pleased by the question. “Exactly! Because he hated Chet. Chet was always making fun of him.”
“Where are the hands, Trish?”
“I don’t know. He took them somewhere.”
“Where?”
Glance at Wilde.
The PD said, “Honestly. She has absolutely no idea.”
“Okay, let’s move on. Trish, you and Paul go way back.”
Brief, whispered conv
ersation between Wilde and Bowker.
She said, “A bit.”
Milo said, “How long’s a bit?”
“A while, I’m not sure.”
“Nine years is what we’ve learned.”
Hesitation. Trying to figure out where this was going. Another glance at Wilde. He nodded.
She said, “That sounds about right.”
Wilde said, “Milo, all that time points out the severity of Trish’s situation. She suffers from Stockholm syndrome.” To me: “You know better than I, it’s a chronic disease which when untreated, persists.”
Milo said, “Nine years ago. You and Paul were an item when Paul met Jackie.”
Silence from Bowker.
Wilde said, “We’d love to help, but is this relevant?”
Milo said, “Fair enough.” Back to Bowker: “In terms of your relationship, would you say Paul was in charge?”
“Always,” said Bowker. “Control was his total thing. His primary drive. His obsession.” To me: “He had an obsessive, narcissistic personality disorder. He was like a movie director. Domineering and dominative. Like those wigs he made me wear. Everything was a production.”
Milo said, “Wanting you to go brunette.”
“Wanting what he wanted when he wanted.”
“You went brunette when you hung out with Chet Corvin in Arrowhead.”
“It’s what he wanted.”
“Chet or Paul?”
“Um…both, I guess.”
“And here I was thinking blondes had more fun—so Chet liked the wigs, too.”
“Another control freak,” she said. “He put me in negligees. I had to do all sorts of things.”
“Role-playing.”
Pout. Eyelid flutter. “Everyone molds me like I’m clay.”
Milo checked his notes. “When Paul brought the body back to Evada Lane, how did he know he had enough time to position it before the Corvins returned?”
Bowker’s reply was too quick, a well-trained dog responding to a hand signal.
“He knew because he saw them leaving and talked to Chet. Chet was bragging. As usual.”
“Bragging about what?”
“About how they were driving all the way to Restaurant Row even though no one but him wanted to.”
“Another controlling guy.”
“I sometimes don’t make the best choices,” said Trisha Bowker.
Wilde cleared his throat.
Bowker said, “I’m no expert, that’s for sure.”
“On men,” said Milo.
“On life.” She pouted, strained for tears, produced a droplet and gave up. “I don’t know how it got so messed up.”
Milo nodded, spent more time with his notes. “Okay…if the Corvins had stayed closer to home, what was the plan?”
Bowker’s eyes left-shifted. Her body echoed the same route as she turned to her lawyer.
Wilde said, “If you know, sure.”
Bowker said, “I don’t. The plan was Paul’s.”
“Did Paul have a contingency plan for what to do with the body?”
Wilde said, “She already answered that.”
Bowker said, “I really don’t know.”
“Got it,” said Milo, “but could you take a guess? Seeing as you knew Paul better than probably anyone.”
“Hmm,” said Trisha Bowker. “He could just wait.”
“For?”
“Another time.”
“To bring the body to the Corvins.”
“Yup.”
“Putting the body in Chet’s den was important to Paul.”
“Chet demeaned him all the time. Paul decided to get him. He watched him. All of them.”
Sudden passion in her voice. Shared anger.
She realized she’d overstepped and drew her head back. “Look, I can’t tell you anything factual, just that Paul was a monster. He hated Chet but basically he hated everyone, he’s a hateful, hateful person, always…planning.” To Wilde: “Can I tell them about the alarm?”
“Please do.”
“Here’s an example of how premeditative he was, sir. He learned their alarm code by watching her punch the keypad and memorizing. He’s got a great memory. A long memory, he gets vengeful.”
“Her, being…”
“Felice. He was always playing up to her. Being Mr. Softie. Different from Chet, that was the key. He even stole a key from their kitchen.”
The beginnings of a smirk. Slyly collaborative.
Again, Trisha Bowker caught herself and turned theatrically grave. “It wasn’t even necessary. They didn’t even put the alarm on. Paul told me. He bragged about the whole thing.”
“The Corvins made Paul’s job easier.”
“Sure did.” She shifted in her chair. Working hard not to gloat.
Milo shuffled papers. Without looking up, he said, “Another thing that made Paul’s job easier was your wrapping up the body and helping him load it into the truck.”
Wilde’s mouth opened.
Bowker said, “No, no way, sir. I never did any of those things.”
“What did you do when Paul was wrapping and loading?”
“Nothing, I was just in the house.”
“Which house?”
“The little one.”
“On Marquette.”
Her face had lost color. “He made me stay. I was terrified, went to the bedroom and waited until he was done. It was horrible. I was paralyzed by anxiety.”
“Stockholm syndrome.”
“It’s mental torture,” she said. “I’ve had a severely chronic case for a long, long time. Even before I met Paul, men were abusing me.”
Hollick Wilde looked at me again. “Some people think of it as a particularly severe variant of PTSD.”
Milo said, “How long have you been afflicted, Trisha?”
“Since I was a girl,” she said. “I was abused. A lot more since Paul.”
“Paul scared you.”
“He scared me out of my mind.”
“Because of what he did to Jackie?”
Trisha Bowker blinked and folded her lips inward.
Hollick Wilde said, “Let’s stay away from that, Milo.”
“Can I ask if there were other victims besides Jackie?”
Bowker’s eye shift was the answer. The search would continue.
Wilde said, “Sorry, please no. I’d rather we stick to the case at hand.”
“Fair enough,” said Milo. He shuffled papers. “All these rules, you may need to guide me as I proceed.”
“Happy to.”
Trisha Bowker’s posture relaxed. Everyone getting along so well.
* * *
—
Milo had her go over the details again. She produced a nearly word-for-word version of her first account.
“Got the picture,” he said. “Hmmm…here’s something relevant to the case at hand, Mr. Wilde.”
Smiling at the lawyer. Wilde said, “Relevant’s always good.”
Stupidest thing I’ve heard from the lips of a defense attorney. He gave Bowker a go-ahead nod.
Milo said, “Trish, if I told you we found Mr. Braun’s hands buried in the backyard of the Marquette house, under an oleander bush, what would you say?”
Multiple blinks. Rightward roll of her body, a sailor accommodating a big wave.
“Trish?”
“I’d say that’s good. I’d say I’m glad, now, you see what Paul’s capable of.”
“Scary guy.”
“Terrifying.”
“Stockholm syndrome…okay, now if I told you, Trish, that the skin on top of the hands we found buried in the Marquette backyard had your DNA on it, what would you say?”
She half rose, sank back down. “That’s impossible.”
“I’m afraid it’s more than possible, Trish, it’s actual. The pathologist found your DNA in little half-moon indentations on the top of the hand. Most likely from nails being dug in.”
“No way,” she said. “Paul mus
t’ve put them there.”
“He took the time to put your hand on top of Mr. Braun’s hand and dug you in?”
“No, no, no, I never. He figured out a way…” Her head shook hard enough to inflict whiplash.
Wilde said, “I think we should—”
Bowker shot out of her chair. “He made me! He would’ve killed me!”
“Those nail marks, Trisha, tells me you were angry.”
“No! Terrified. He would’ve cut me up, too!”
Milo said, “Speaking of cutting, we also found your fingerprints on the band saw in the garage.”
“That’s ’cause he made me use it!”
“To cut off Hargis Braun’s hands—”
“It wasn’t—he was already dead—”
Hollick Wilde said, “Sorry, guys, interview terminated.”
Trisha Bowker pretended to cry.
Wilde said, “Hang in.”
“How can I? They don’t understand.”
“We’ll get them to see the light,” said Wilde. But his face was dark.
* * *
—
By nightfall, Wilde had come up with an offer: In return for revealing where Jacqueline Mearsheim’s body was buried, Bowker would plead to accessory to manslaughter after the fact and a three-year sentence.
John Nguyen laughed.
The following morning, Wilde proposed accessory to second-degree murder before the fact and a ten-year sentence.
John Nguyen proposed twenty-five to life. Wilde tried fifteen.
Nguyen said, “I can go with fifteen to twenty-five but in the end it’ll be up to the judge.”
Wilde said, “Okay.”
To Milo Nguyen confided, “I’ll get Friedman. She’ll get life.”
Even with Trisha Bowker’s hand-drawn map, it took a while.
After two days of searching, Jacqueline Mearsheim’s partial skeleton was found under four feet of rich agricultural soil in the Santa Ynez Mountains above Santa Barbara. Private land, the failed vineyard of a music industry honcho who’d long given up on Pinot Noir. Getting his permission had involved calling the Cayman Islands.
Per Bowker’s self-cleansing account, she and Mearsheim had visited a nearby winery during a weekend when Jackie languished in bed with the flu. Spotting the abandoned estate, Paul had made a mental note and returned months later at night with her body in the trunk of his car. Entering the estate by snipping barbed wire, then digging unmolested near a windbreak of blue-gum eucalyptus.
Night Moves Page 33