by Lois Duncan
“But my second question wasn’t related to that first one. I asked, ‘What may I know about the identity of the killer … specifically the person, location, and present situation of this being?’ The answer to that was presented in a whole different paragraph, and the people referred to in that answer weren’t the ones in the hit car! Kait considers her killers the people who hired the hitmen! That second section of the reading pertained to the Vietnamese!”
Robin caught on immediately.
“Of course!” she exclaimed. “Dung’s relatives took him to recuperate in Kansas City, which is northeast in the direction of Chicago! An Le took off for the West Coast where his paralegal cousin lives; and the third man took the VW south to dispose of at the border.”
“Everything fits if you think in terms of two cars,” I said. “Kait must have seen the scout car before she became aware of the Camaro.” I’d gone over the readings so often, I could quote them from memory. “ ‘There is this image which she gets so briefly that it is almost nonreal. There will be this which will seem to show some recognition in her, and it is as if she is not afraid—someone she will seem to recognize and know. … This car will seemingly turn off to her left as if to drive away.’ And that’s exactly what happened, the VW bug turned north! According to the police report the people who saw that car live two blocks north of Lomas on Arno. They heard the shots and got up to look out their window and saw the VW come racing up the street—”
“And the driver was someone Kait knew and wasn’t afraid of! That’s one reason she feels so betrayed!”
We were interrupting each other, completing each other’s sentences, oblivious to the fact that the luggage from Robin’s flight was long gone from the carousel and the last stray pieces had been carted off to the unclaimed baggage area.
The trade show proved so exhausting that any ideas about nights in the clubs fell quickly by the wayside. During our days in the booth 26,000 booksellers paraded through the exhibit hall, and by the time we got out in the evening, we were too worn out to do anything but grab a bite in the coffee shop and collapse on our beds. We would lie there, with our eyes tightly closed to shut out the kaleidoscope of lights that blinked outside our window, and talk until one or the other of us fell asleep.
I still was convinced that Dung hadn’t wanted Kait killed and may even have made an ineffectual attempt to save her.
“He must have been worried that Kait was in danger,” I said. “Dung’s neighbors told Mike that Dung and a friend named Adrian were tailing Kait to see if a VW was following her days before the shooting took place. He probably didn’t realize that outsiders would be hired. He thought the VW bug would be used for the hit.”
“But his friends knew the truth,” Robin said. “And they knew where Kait would be that night. They were at the apartment often enough to have seen Susan’s map. On the night of the shooting Dung was probably out canvassing the town, searching for Kait in order to warn her that there was a contract out on her. Didn’t Betty say there was ‘one that night who was looking for her, and that one will have had others looking for her, and it will have had to do with some kind of message to be given to her’? That’s why Dung wasn’t home when Susan called the apartment. If he wasn’t with An and Khanh, he was out with Adrian.”
“That would have left An free to go out in the VW,” I said.
“It would also explain why, right after Kait died, Dung told you he had no friends. He could have suspected his buddies of being the ones who killed her.”
On our final night in Las Vegas, as we lay talking in the darkness, I repeated what Mary Martinez had told me about the danger of making information available to the defense attorneys that they could then use to divert suspicion from the Hispanics.
“It seems that we have to make a choice,” I said. “Since the police won’t consider anything but random shooting, we either go for the hitmen or for the people who hired them.”
“Kait made that decision for us when she sent you that message,” Robin said. “She wanted to focus our attention on the man in the VW. She was telling us to go for the gold.”
“We don’t have a chance without her accident report,” I said. “Right now, we don’t have proof she even knew about the car wrecks. Mike wants me to con Snappy Cars into getting the report for us, but I’m afraid I’ll trip over my tongue or burst into tears.”
“Kerry could do it,” Robin said. “She’s our ‘Little Miss Television.’ ”
“I don’t know,” I said doubtfully. “You know how Kerry is about anything unpleasant.”
“She’s changed since Kait died,” Robin said. “She’s gotten a lot nervier. I’m going to stop over in Dallas on my way back to Florida, and I’ll try to talk her into it.
“There’s still one thing in that reading that I don’t understand, though. It’s that image of a boat going fast across water. It came in answer to your question ‘Does Kait have a message for me?’ ”
“ ‘There is an image of a straight line which will seem to come down,’ ” I quoted. “ ‘There will be wakes out from either side of it as if to try to show motion. There will be this which seems to be moving through water very fast, and this would have something to do with the energy of one who is leaving, departing, and there is a far and urgency in this as if to leave and not return. A long trip across water is indicated in this image.’ ”
“That’s the part I mean. Does it make any sense to you?”
“Of course. What she wants is to get those bastards deported.”
17
WHEN I GOT BACK to Albuquerque, I learned that Brett had been trying to reach me. Donnie, who had taken the message, had not written down the phone number, and since Brett had recently moved, I didn’t know how to get back to him.
Halfway through the week I came home from the store to be greeted by the shriek of the telephone and hurried to answer it.
The voice on the line wasn’t Brett’s, it was Kerry’s.
“I have the information about the wreck!” she announced triumphantly.
“How in the world—” I began.
“I pretended I was you!” she said. “I called Snappy’s national office and told the woman there that I was Lois Arquette and my husband was threatening to divorce me because he’d been going over last year’s credit-card statements and discovered I’d paid a bill without checking out the charges. He was accusing me of paying Snappy for the rental of a car in California at a time when nobody in our family had been out there.”
“The woman bought that?”
“She was lovely! It took her two days to locate the rental agreement, and she had to go digging through piles of back records to find it. I think we should send her flowers!”
“Was there a wreck?”
“Oh, yes, there was a wreck all right. When were Kait and Dung in the same town as R & J Car Leasing?”
“March 28, 1989.”
“That was the date of the wreck! And do you know why Mike couldn’t find the report on it? It’s because it was in Dung’s name—he’s the one who was driving!”
“They probably switched seats—” I began.
“No, they didn’t,” Kerry said. “Not only did they not switch seats, Kait wasn’t even in the car!”
“But Detective Gallegos told us—”
“What he said wasn’t true, Mother. Dung was alone in the rental car, and he rear-ended a personal vehicle driven by a man named Bob Manh Bui. There were two passengers in the second car, Kim Bui and Dung Bui. Police report #89-3303 was filed in Westminster by Officer J. M. Waller, badge #56313. Nobody reported any injuries at the scene.”
“Then the accident could have been legitimate?”
“That’s how it seemed on the surface, but not when I called the head of Snappy’s liability department. She told me that, after the fact, all three of the Buis made large personal injury claims for cervical strains and soft tissue injuries. They were covered one hundred percent by liability insurance from a high-risk com
pany called Progressive Insurance.”
“How in the world did you get all this?” I asked incredulously.
“I just went with the flow,” Kerry said. “It was like that time when I took the kids to Wet and Wild and was going down the water slide with Brittany on my lap. We came zipping around a curve, and there in front of us was this big fat man who was stuck on the slide! I thought, Oh, no! Disaster time! But when we were right at the point of slamming into him, the water just swept us up and whooshed us around him. It was like that with those phone calls. Every time I was sure I was headed for a crash, I was swept around the blockage and got just what I needed!”
She laughed, and I suddenly realized how long it had been since I’d heard Kerry laugh.
“We’d better sign off so I can give Mike a call,” I told her.
“I’ve already called him,” she said. “When I couldn’t reach you, I phoned Mike at the Journal. He sounds like a hunk.”
“You’re happily married,” I reminded her.
“Mother, really! I was thinking about Robin.”
“Mike’s spoken for,” I said. “Besides, Robin already has more hunks than she knows what to do with.”
“Oh, well, it was just an idea.” She laughed again. “The people at Snappy are going to mail you the accident report, and I promised Mike you’d give him a copy. He says the defense has a husband-wife team of private detectives named Hicks who are digging up stuff on the Vietnamese, and maybe he can find some way of using that to help us.”
That night Brett called, and I was relieved to learn there was no crisis in his life. What he wanted to tell me was that he’d had a dream about Kait.
“I think she may be getting ready to reincarnate,” he said. “I’ve never had a dream as vivid as this one, and I think she was trying to get a message across to me. In the dream I was on a train filled with Russians, and it was pulling into a station. I was getting ready to get off, and there was Kait, sitting in the seat right next to the door. I said, ‘Kait, is that you?’ because she didn’t look much like she used to, but she gave me that funny little smile, and then I was sure. I sat down next to her and said, ‘Kait! It’s so great to see you! Now that you’re here, you can live with us again!’ She said, ‘No, I can’t. I’m going to have new parents, and they already love me.’ I said, ‘That means you can’t come back?’ And she said, ‘No, I can’t come back. I have a new life now.’ It blew me away! She’s getting ready to run out on us!”
“She won’t do that until her murder is solved,” I said. “And even then, you know we’re going to catch up with her.”
“I think the message was ‘put up or shut up,’ ” Brett said. “Kait’s getting antsy. She wants us to get a move on.”
Betty had said that the “game at hand” was intimidation. Now we decided the time had come to reveal that we had a “bomb.” Mike was not enthusiastic about being detonated, but reluctantly agreed to allow us to tell APD he was investigating the case provided we didn’t disclose his sources of information. Don thought the best person to talk to would be Sergeant Lowe, and I agreed with him. I felt that Lowe was honest and well intentioned and that, if we ever had the chance to meet with her in person, we might be able to make a breakthrough. Don tried to call her and was told that she was out sick and would not be back in the office until the end of the month. He tried phoning Steve Gallegos, but couldn’t get through to him. I finally called Barbara Cantwell, the detective we had been told would be “following a paper trail through Orange County.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cantwell said, when I got her on the line. “I’ve never had anything to do with your daughter’s case.”
“Sergeant Lowe said you’d be investigating R & J Car Leasing.”
“That was four whole months ago!” exclaimed Cantwell.
“Did you do it?” I asked.
“There is no such business in Orange County.”
“Mike Gallagher was able to get information about it”
When Cantwell spoke again there was an edge to her voice. “Why is Gallagher checking out things in California?”
“He’s taken a personal interest in the case,” I told her. “It’s my impression he’s going to do an in-depth story on it.”
The next day, Mike was called to the police station for a two-and-a-half-hour interview with Gallegos and Lieutenant Patrick Dunworth, head of the APD Violent Crimes Unit. Sergeant Lowe had not been included.
After the meeting, Mike called me.
“They made it clear they do not want me to write a story,” he said. “They refuse to consider any possibility other than that Kait was the victim of a drive-by shooting by a bunch of drunk Martineztown kids. ‘This is our case—this is the way it’s going to be,’ they said. They wanted to get my cooperation in calming you down. They think you’re a woman who didn’t relate well to her daughter and is feeling guilty now that she’s dead. They can’t understand why you can’t just accept the situation at face value and are trying to complicate things by inventing a dramatic conspiracy. I tried to explain that people who are not used to being mixed up in crimes tend to have a lot of questions about what’s going on. They’re going to set up an appointment and try to pacify you.”
That appointment was scheduled for seven thirty A.M. on June 18.
Our meeting with Steve Gallegos and Barbara Cantwell started off pleasantly enough. Gallegos apologized for the fact that Sergeant Lowe had an important meeting and couldn’t be with us, which was a surprise to us, since Don had been told he couldn’t speak with her because she was ill and wouldn’t be back at work until the beginning of July. I found myself wondering if we were deliberately being prevented from talking with her and, if so, why.
The file on Kait’s murder had now been completed and released to the DA, which meant that the public had legal access to it. It was over a thousand pages long, and since it cost a dollar a page to have it reproduced at the courthouse, Gallegos agreed for us to borrow his copy and get it photocopied.
With this settled I asked if their case was as weak as we’d been led to believe by the media. This was not a wise question. Both detectives were quick to inform me that “if our case falls through and your daughter’s killers go free, it will be all your doing.” Cantwell seemed especially angry and accused me of “trying to sabotage this case by talking to everybody—the press, the FBI, the attorney general, and the defense attorneys.”
I told her in all honesty that I’d had no contact with either the attorney general or the defense attorneys.
“You don’t have to talk to them personally to wreck things!” she told me. “When you force information on us, you make it available to the defense!”
In an effort to yank me out of the fire by changing the subject, Don asked if there was any way we could be certain that Kait’s things would not be destroyed when the trial was over. Gallegos assured him we had no cause for worry.
“I would have to give signed permission for that to happen,” he said. “It can’t occur inadvertently.”
“It happened to Mary Martinez,” I interjected. “All her son’s things ‘disappeared’ between the trial and the appeal.”
“Who’s Mary Martinez?” Gallegos and Cantwell asked in unison.
“The head of the Crime Victims Alliance in New Mexico.”
“I’ve never heard of such an organization,” they chorused.
By now things were so bad that I didn’t see how they could get worse, so I asked about the status of the investigation in Orange County.
From then on the dialogue sounded as though it had been written for Night Court:
CANTWELL: “Nothing in California needs to be investigated. Nobody there had reason to want to harm your daughter.”
LOIS: “What if she was getting ready to blow the whistle on the car-wreck scam!” CANTWELL: “Those are common in the L.A. area. Everybody does them.”
LOIS: “Why does the fact that they’re common make them unimportant? I�
�d think it would be just the opposite. Kait was getting ready to explode a scam worth hundreds of thousands of dollars!” CANTWELL: “If her boyfriend made that much money, he’d be living in luxury.”
LOIS: “I didn’t say Dung got that much! The people who are raking it in are the Vietnamese lawyers, doctors, pharmacists, and clinics!”
GALLEGOS: “What makes you think Kait was going to blow the scam? Why would she do something to incriminate herself and hurt her boyfriend?”
LOIS: “She realized she’d made a mistake and was prepared to take the consequences. When she left our house that night she said she was breaking up with Dung.”
GALLEGOS: “She was always telling people that, but she didn’t mean it. She left a note on the counter that night saying she was sorry about their fight and signed it ‘love.’ ” DON: “Was the note signed?”
GALLEGOS: “No.”
DON: “Then how do you know Kait wrote it?”
GALLEGOS: “It had to be from her. It was right there on the counter.”
CANTWELL: “I’ve read the transcript of the statement by that truck driver. It’s totally convincing.”
LOIS: “Sergeant Lowe told me she thought you had the right men, but she was no longer sure about the motive.”
GALLEGOS: “I don’t know why she’d say that. You must have misunderstood her.” LOIS: “She said Barbara Cantwell was going to check out R & J Car Leasing. R & J did exist. It went out of business after Kait died, at the same time two Vietnamese clinics in the same area were closed down for insurance fraud.”
CANTWELL: “Where did that information come from?”
LOIS: “I’m not at liberty to say, but I think you ought to check up on it.”
CANTWELL: “You expect us to waste our time phoning out to Orange County for information you already have?”
LOIS: “I do expect you to verify information. You’re the police—that’s your job.”
Cantwell got up and stalked out of the room in fury. Alone with Gallegos the atmosphere was less venomous, for he was a likable man and could be very charming. He was certain that he had convinced Mike that the Hispanics were guilty and couldn’t understand why he couldn’t convince us also. When we were finally able to get across to him the fact that we weren’t challenging that aspect of the case, he seemed greatly relieved.