by Lois Duncan
“I guess that means just to badger them,” Betty said. “They’re scared right now, and if they’re pressured enough they can be broken.”
ANSWER: It is as if Kaitlyn will accuse and she will know them and they must know that she will know them and the search for this common denominator will be the problem. This third one will not be a part of this R & J symbol.
“The kid in the backseat wasn’t part of the conspiracy,” Betty said.
“Then why did they drag him along?”
“It doesn’t say.”
ANSWER: There will be many who could come forward, not as eyewitnesses, but as ones who will have heard the boasts and confession. There will be this that would show that actual eyewitnesses will not be necessary, but that there will be other forms of witness to bear in this case. The sense is to apply the heat, to turn the tourniquet. There is not enough pressure being applied to these two, and they can be broken down if there is the heart to pursue this at this time. The sense of an intimidated police force will also enter into this and they will not have anyone who will seem to want to take this into their own life and apply the full skills that will be necessary. The due process must be challenged in this case.
Kait insists on R & J!
“She’s adamant about this R & J,” Betty said. “I looked in the phone book and there are three local businesses operating under those initials. Why don’t you check and see if they have white delivery vehicles?”
“Dung has a Hispanic friend named Ray,” I said. “I wonder if his last name starts with J.”
“That doesn’t feel right,” Betty said. “There wouldn’t be any ‘and’ symbol.”
“Could you ask another question for me?”
“Sure,” Betty said.
“Would it be the right thing for me to turn all my information over to Mike Gallagher, an investigative reporter at the Journal?”
“I’ll be back with you pretty quick on that,” Betty said.
Ten minutes later she called back
“This is strange,” she said. “I’ve got these real funny images.”
QUESTION: WOULD IT BE THE RIGHT THING TO TURN ALL THE INFORMATION OVER TO MΊKE GALLAGHER, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER?
ANSWER: There is an image of a flatbed with a great bomb on it. It will be that this will be for show and that there will be many other weapons that will be available in this. There will be this which will show that by putting this into the hands of the media it will not be allowed to become buried and intimidated. It will show that there will be this bomb, which will be this Mike, and it would be that this would appear at first to be overkill in all this, but the mere presence in this case of Mike would seem to cause some kind of intimidation in itself. It will be that intimidation is the game at hand and there will be this which will show that this will also cause a great headache.
“I was feeling a physical headache as I typed this,” Betty said.
ANSWER: Yet there is a need to end this ordeal and to come to the kind of conclusion which will permit stability and peace in the community. There is a feeling that this will be simple to resolve and yet it will take this kind of intimidation to solve it. There is no need to drop this case for it will have some very important meanings in the overview in this community.
There will be in this then the knowing that the image of the great bomb will be Mike, but that there can be other avenues just the same. The media shows which will appeal from the national level will be one way, and Mike can be instrumental in getting this into that view. There is however a risk that Mike will be taking, and he will know that he would be very vulnerable and that he will need to share much of his information with someone who will be able to keep this going when Mike would seem to quit. This is for his own protection and another way for him to play the game the way he will choose. On the condition that Mike will keep many avenues open and share this information with another, then he can be the one to do this without harm to himself. There is no sense of any karmic connection to Mike alone, and it would be all his own choice at this time. He can figure ways to keep the heat on, and he can be one to have a personal stake in all this, and thus from this then Lois can seem to award him with this responsibility at this time.
He wants it.
“Mike isn’t karmically involved with either you or Kait, so he can go at this in an academic, intellectual way,” Betty explained. “He can pull up some very important things by keeping an exposed view of himself, and on the other hand having some secret help in the background. The bomb is symbolic of Mike’s energy—it comes on like overkill—but in this situation it’s necessary. If the police were pursuing this case in the proper way, it would practically be solved by now.”
“It’s hard to picture Mike on national television,” I said. “Investigative reporters try to keep a low profile.”
“All I know is it says that he’ll do it,” Betty said. “There are two references here to creating stability in the community. Maybe this case will get us a better police force. I hope either you or Mike will follow up on those R & J’s in the phone book. Kait’s very insistent about the importance of that symbol.”
She said she would mail me the printouts of the two readings.
As before, she refused to let me pay her.
The next day I ran off a copy of the same letter I’d sent Sergeant Lowe and the FBI and mailed it to Mike at the Journal office. Then I drove around town, checking out R & J businesses. Because they were located in different areas of the city, it took most of the morning to visit all of them. None seemed in the least suspicious, and none had any sort of white vehicle.
In bed that night I told Kait I was tired of her game-playing.
“Let’s cut out the middleman,” I said. “We don’t have time for this. If this R & J symbol is as important as you’ve made it out to be, you have to find some way to let me know what it means.”
That night I dreamed that Don and I were in a car, parked on the side of a dark road. We dozed off, and when I opened my eyes I discovered that while I had been sleeping somebody had stuck a business card under the windshield wiper. It said “R & J Car Rental.”
The dream was so vivid, I remembered it clearly in the morning and described it to Don at breakfast.
“You’ve already checked out all the R & J’s in the phone book,” he reminded me.
“Maybe it’s a new business and doesn’t have a listing yet.”
Directory Assistance could come up with no R & J Car Rental.
Betty’s printouts arrived in the mail, and I studied them carefully. The reading on Mike showed a crude thumbnail sketch of a bed with a bomb on it, and in the margin next to the word headache, Betty had scribbled, “the price of your suit.” I hoped this didn’t mean that media exposure would cost us the case against the hitmen, but if it did, it was too late to do anything about it.
That afternoon I went out to run errands, and as I was driving back to the apartment I passed a small branch library. It was fifteen minutes till closing time, but on impulse I circled the block and parked and went in. A shelf against the back wall held a collection of phone directories
I got down the Los Angeles phone book and checked the car leasing services, but no R & J Car Rental was listed.
Psychic reading by Betty Muench, done by “automatic writing” from various areas of the country.
Had I really expected to find one? No, of course, I hadn’t. I was playing this psychic detective game to keep myself sane, but in the logical part of my brain I knew nothing would come of it.
I returned the book to the shelf and was getting ready to leave when I remembered the alleged purpose of Kait’s trip to California. Disneyland wasn’t in L.A. proper, it was in Anaheim.
I didn’t know if Orange County had its own phone directory, but since I was already at the library, I decided to find out. I discovered there was a separate book of yellow pages for Orange County, and when I looked up rental car agencies, I was stunned to discover an “R & J Car Leasing
” in Costa Mesa.
I could tell the librarians were impatient for me to leave, but I was in such a state of shock that I wasn’t about to go anywhere. I must have looked as if I was getting ready to keel over, because one of them came over to ask if I was ill.
“No,” I said, “I just need to sit down for a minute.”
“R & J”—it was just as Betty had described it—not “R and J,” but two letters bracketing the “&” sign. While the librarians were occupied straightening chairs and picking up litter, I ripped the page with the R & J listing out of the phone book.
I didn’t even feel guilty.
That night when Don came home, I was not cooking dinner; I was seated at the breakfast bar, downing a martini. When I told him about my day, he fixed one for himself, and we sat on adjacent stools, draining our glasses, too shaken to think about eating. After we’d given ourselves some time to calm down, we drove over to the house, got out our tax file, and dug out our MasterCard statement for March 1989. Kait’s credit card had been part of our family account, and every month she had reimbursed us for the charges she made on it.
The statement for March of the previous year reflected all the charges Kait had made on the trip to California, including the rental of a car from a place called Snappy Car Rental.
“That has to be the car Dung used for the wreck,” Don speculated. “That’s odd in itself, because the car I reserved for them was from Avis. Dung must have had some reason for canceling the Avis car and renting a car from Snappy to have the wreck in. At any rate, R & J must have some other significance. Maybe it’s a money-laundering outfit or a cover for the car-wreck operation.”
The statement showed that on the nights of the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth, Kait and Dung had stayed at a motel in Costa Mesa. After that there were no more charges in Costa Mesa until March 31.
“If R & J set this up, the wreck must have been on March twenty-eighth,” Don said as he studied the statement. “Then Kait and Dung flitted around having fun for a while and came back to Costa Mesa before returning to Albuquerque so Dung could collect payment.”
We contacted Kait’s bank and got a copy of her April 1989 checking account statement. We were not surprised to find a deposit of $1,490 made early in the month. We decided that Dung must have held back $510 of the $2,000 he received for the wreck and given Kait the remainder to apply toward the damage deposit and the first and last month’s rent for their apartment.
I phoned the number listed for R & J Car Leasing and was told it was no longer in service. I then did something I should have done many months earlier and dialed the numbers in Santa Ana that had appeared on Kait’s final phone bill.
Both had been disconnected.
12
KAIT WAS STILL THERE! More meaningful to us than any other aspect of the whole R & J experience was that it seemed to be proof of Kait’s continued existence. Despite my conscious acceptance of Betty’s communication with her, the skeptical side of my nature was an ingrained part of me, and there were times when I doubted my own sanity. This new experience convinced me that, not only did Kait still exist, she had the ability, at least in some cases, to communicate directly.
Spurred by this new revelation, I reread Many Lives, Many Masters, less interested in the subject of reincarnation than in the “space between lifetimes.” I was especially fascinated by the sections that told about people who had been through near-death experiences. Drawing upon the research of such renowned authorities as Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and Dr. Raymond Moody, who had conducted extensive and well-documented studies on death and dying, Dr. Weiss pointed out the striking similarities among the experiences of people who had “died” and then been medically resuscitated. Almost without exception they described the sensation of becoming painlessly detached from their bodies and rising to a vantage point from which they could look down and observe the resuscitation efforts. Then, after a period of time, they became aware of a brilliant light in the distance, seen in a number of cases at the end of a tunnel, and felt themselves magnetically drawn in its direction. Some of these people attempted to go to the light and were turned back, because their duties on earth were unfinished. Others chose on their own to return to their bodies.
In one section Dr. Weiss’s patient, Catherine, addressed the subject of people in comas. She described such people as “resting.” If they still had lessons to learn or to impart to others, they were kept in their bodies until those lessons were absorbed, but if their mission in that particular lifetime was completed, modern medicine notwithstanding, they could move to the next dimension. If that were true, I thought, then perhaps my decision, “I can do that,” had made it unnecessary for Kait to remain in her body to teach me the lesson that people can do what they have to do.
In mid-February I had a call from Sergeant Lowe saying that she had changed her mind about my letter and was going to send an investigator to California.
“I feel sure we’ve arrested the right men, but I’m starting to question the motive,” she told me. “Right now we’re busy digging up evidence to get these guys indicted, but as soon as we get that done, I’ll be assigning a new detective to the case. From now on we’re going to be working this thing from both ends. Barbara Cantwell will go over Kait’s credit-card statement with you, and you can help her follow a paper trail through Orange County.”
My opinion of Sergeant Lowe went shooting to the ceiling, and the name Barbara Cantwell immediately became a mantra for me. At night when I couldn’t sleep, I repeated it over and over in my mind and visualized Joan of Arc in a policewoman’s uniform.
Mike Gallagher received my letter and called to say that his editor had assigned him the story. This did seem a bit like overkill now that I knew Barbara Cantwell would be working with us, but I figured there was nothing to be lost by having Mike involved also.
“APD has ignored a lot of things that they should have checked into,” he said. “Did Kait ever mention a skinhead named Adrian?”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“This guy lived at their apartment complex and apparently he and Dung were pretty thick,” Mike said. “Adrian told neighbors that a couple of days before the shooting, he and Dung were driving around, tailing Kait, because Dung was afraid she was being followed by a beige VW.”
“The car that was spotted in the area of the shooting?”
“That’s a possibility,” Mike said. “When I was doing a series on drug pushers, I talked with two men who live at the Alvarado Apartments. They said Dung told them Kait was killed by a Vietnamese gang. I personally dragged the guys down to the station to tell APD about it, but the police didn’t want to hear it. They’d already concocted their scenario and didn’t want it muddied. Dung’s told other people all kinds of things about the murder. A contact at the courthouse told me the police have received—and shrugged off—six different reports from people who claimed to have heard him admit to being involved in some way in the shooting.”
He asked for a picture of Dung, and I sent him a snapshot that I’d taken on Kait’s last Thanksgiving. Dung was seated at our dinner table, and Kait was standing behind him. They looked very happy.
I leafed through other snapshots taken on that occasion—I was leaning over Don’s shoulder as he carved the turkey; Brett was clowning around, pretending to swallow a drumstick; Donnie, bright-eyed and laughing, was hugging his girlfriend. The family we were today was far less photogenic, for all of us were experiencing stress-induced health problems. Don had lost ten pounds and looked ten years older, and I had developed high blood pressure. Our daughters reported headaches, insomnia, and bouts of heavy bleeding between their menstrual periods. Donnie, who had rebelled against living in the efficiency, had been camping out on the sofas of a series of friends, going short of sleep and overdosing on fast food.
As for Brett, we didn’t even know where he was. When he’d left he had broken off all communication with the family. I knew that when Brett was unhappy he neede
d his space, but I also knew that his judgment was impaired by stress. I had recurring nightmares about him careening down the highway with an open bottle of Jack Daniel’s gripped between his knees.
When Miguel Garcia was arraigned, the judge announced that if the state did not indict him within two weeks she would release him to the custody of his mother. With the deadline pressing upon her Deputy District Attorney Susan Riedel again charged Escobedo and Garcia with first-degree murder and related crimes.
On Friday, February 23, Sergeant Lowe called to say they were now ready to take the case to the grand jury.
“Do you have enough evidence?” I asked her.
“There’s plenty,” she told me. “Even though we don’t have any eyewitnesses, we’ve rounded up a lot of people who heard the men bragging.”
“Do the suspects know when the grand jury is convening?”
“We’re required by law to give them thirty-six hours notice.
“Are both of them currently in custody?”
“We’re still holding Garcia on the burglary charges,” Lowe said. “Once the men are indicted, we’ll issue a bench warrant for Escobedo.”
I found it hard to believe it could be that simple.
“Aren’t you afraid he’ll run?”
“He can’t run,” Sergeant Lowe assured me. “He’s on probation. He can’t leave town without the permission of his probation officer.”
Sixteen witnesses testified at the investigation, including Steve Gallegos, two boys from the Juvenile Detention Center, two staff members from JDC, and an assortment of residents of the Martineztown neighborhood. We were not allowed to attend the hearing, but later I was able to acquire the transcript. A fourteen-year-old girl testified to overhearing Juve Escobedo boast about his involvement in Kait’s murder; an eleven-year-old boy said Miguel Garcia had bragged about it to him; and the residents and staff at the Detention Center had heard the story from Marty Martinez, the third man in the car.