by Lois Duncan
EVERY TIME ONE OF the psychic readings proved accurate I was just as stunned as I had been back when I discovered R & J Car Leasing listed in the Orange County phone book. No matter how much evidence I was confronted with that psychometry, telepathy, and clairvoyance were a reality, a lifetime of skepticism had structured my mind-set and I needed continual confirmation that my belief in them was justified. If I had lived in the time of Christ, I would have demanded to see the nail holes in His palms and then been equally astonished by the nail holes in His feet.
“It’s Rod!” I said to Don when the Hickses had left. “I remember that bracelet! I was there when Kait had it engraved!”
“Do you remember his last name?”
“No, it’s been too long.”
“What kind of car did he drive? Did it have four-wheel drive?”
“I never saw his car. Kait wasn’t supposed to be dating boys who were old enough to drive, so he never brought it over.”
If I could come up with Rod’s name and the Hickses could find him for us, he might be able to provide all the answers we were looking for!
The video store arsoned by Van Hong Phuc had the address that was on Bao Tran’s business card.
Mother wouldn’t like him.
Mother’s changed her mind, Kait!
I could see her disapproval.
Mother approves now!
The fact that Rod had gone to Miguel’s attorneys, when the natural thing to have done would have been to go to the police, suggested that whatever evidence he had to offer would incriminate somebody other than Miguel and Juve. Perhaps he had gone to the police and they had turned him away, as they allegedly had turned away other would-be informants whose stories didn’t mesh with the random-shooting scenario.
I drove over to Kait’s old high school and perused the yearbooks that spanned the years when Rod would have been a student there, but I couldn’t find his face in any of the photographs. The fact that he was older than most of his classmates probably had curtailed his interest in school activities, and apparently he hadn’t bothered to get his senior picture taken. I scanned the hundreds of names on the school registration list for those years, but the only two “Rodneys” who were listed were no older than Kait. Was it possible “Rod” was either a middle name or a nickname? Kait’s friends from that era had scattered, but I set about trying to locate them through teachers and parents in the hope that one of them might recall Rod’s last name.
In the meantime Dennis Hicks, who was a former San Diego policeman, was dredging up information in the L.A. area.
“I know now why Dung was so free with those names and addresses,” he told us upon his return from a trip to California. “All that information he fed Gallegos was outdated. By the time Dung was finally interrogated in July 1990, Bao Tran had moved from the address on South Fairview, and there apparently was no attorney named Minh Nguyen Duy at the address for the law office on Tran’s business card. However, I did find an attorney named Minh Buy Nguyen at that address and also in Van Nuys, although Minh Buy Nguyen denied ever having heard of anybody named Bao Tran.
“The other business card Dung gave Gallegos showed Bao Tran as vice-president of Japan Life Sleeping Systems, with a branch office called San Diego Dream Life Corporation at 7520 Mesa College Drive. City Licensing showed that no license was ever listed for that corporation and it was arsoned in November 1989. And get this—the business at that Mesa College address had two identities! It was also identified as a video store owned by a man named Hong Phuc Van, who was listed as living at the same address on South Fairview that Bao Tran did.”
“Hong Phuc Van,” I repeated. It sounded familiar. Then it hit me. “Mike was told that Tran’s unlisted phone number was in the name of Van Hong Phuc! He must have gotten the names out of order!”
“They probably were given to him in a jumbled order,” Dennis said. “These people make a habit of rearranging their names. For example, in the Little Saigon phone directory, there’s a listing for ‘Nguyen, Duy Minh’ at the address I was given for Minh Nguyen Duy. There’s nothing illegal about that, but it does make it difficult to keep track of people.
“Hong Phuc Van has served a prison term since Kait’s death. Four months after her murder, he hired two young Vietnamese men to burn down his video store, at the same location as San Diego Dream Life Corporation. In the course of setting the fire, the boys caught fire themselves. They informed on Van, who was arrested and convicted of Arson with Bodily Injury. He was incarcerated from November 1989 to August 1990.
“I couldn’t get much on the mysterious R & J Car Leasing except that it went out of business right after Kait’s death. Nobody seems to know where the owners disappeared to. The people who now run a car leasing business at that address say the police must have come by and asked for R & J personnel at least a dozen times, but the police wouldn’t say what they wanted them for.
“I checked out all the addresses listed on the accident reports. None of the people who claimed to be injured in the wrecks involving Dung and An Le lived at the addresses they gave the police. In fact, a number of the addresses don’t even exist.
“But, despite all this, I’ve changed my mind about the motive for Kait’s murder. I now think she was onto something even more serious than insurance fraud. After her death Dung’s friends in Orange County appear to have panicked. They deserted their homes and businesses and simply evaporated, which indicates to me they were afraid that Kait might have left behind information that was inflammatory enough to get them deported.
“It’s now my belief that Kait found out about a massive drug ring and that Dung’s friends were runners between L.A. and Albuquerque. When Tanya talked with An’s landlord, he told her that as soon as Kait died all hell broke loose at that apartment complex. Things got so loud and violent that he evicted An. He said that while An was his tenant, he was hardly ever there; he spent all his time going back and forth to L.A., and every time he came back he had a huge wad of bills on him.
“When the San Diego Police Department found out who it was I was investigating, they offered to give me a permit to carry a concealed weapon. They said that particular bunch is notoriously dangerous and it’s worth your life just to stick your head in their territory. They’re not only into insurance fraud, but extortion, arson, and paid assassinations, and they run one of the biggest crack-smuggling outfits in the country. Detective Franks of the Westminster Police Department’s Gang Unit told me he spoke on the phone to a detective at APD and tried to explain to her how ruthless and widespread the Vietnamese gangs are, but he got the feeling she wasn’t taking him seriously.
“APD appears to have dropped their investigation of Kait’s death. The L.A. police say they never were contacted about the insurance fraud, and they’re not at all happy about that, because they would have liked to have interrogated Dung. They’re right in the middle of a big undercover investigation that’s targeted at doctors and attorneys who are bilking insurance companies, and the names Dung might have supplied for them could have been invaluable.”
After Dennis left I told Don, “I think it’s time to end my book now. I’m going to call it finished on Kait’s twenty-first birthday.”
“But that’s next week!” Don exclaimed. “The story’s not over yet!”
“Maybe the book will bring us an ending,” I said. “We’ve reached a dead end as far as our personal investigation goes, and there still are so many questions we need to have answered.
“Who was responsible for Kait’s murder, and who was the triggerman? If, as the police are so certain, Miguel Garcia was the person who shot Kait, did the Vietnamese hire him? Is it possible to establish a link between these two sets of people? Were Dung and An Le involved in a drug ring, and if so, did this have anything to do with Kait’s death? Does either Miguel or Juve have relatives in California? Where is the statue of the snake head ‘under which there are held many meetings,’ and what Oriental clan has adopted it as their symbol? Has An been arrested for murde
r? If so, where is he? Who was the VIP Kait saw buying drugs? Did Dung really try to kill himself, or did somebody stab him?
“There must be people out there who can give us some answers, but first they have to know what information we’re looking for. It’s even possible that Rod will read the book and contact us, or that the Good Man Who Is Afraid will gain the courage to come forward. And there still are predictions of Betty’s that haven’t proven out yet. Remember how she said there would be ‘media shows from the national level’ and ‘Mike can be instrumental in getting this into that view’? No national television show is going to be interested in covering the outdated story of the death of a teenager in Albuquerque unless we do something to thrust it into the limelight. And in her very first reading, Betty predicted that there would be ‘one who will be as a kind of undercover person, and there will be in this then the ultimate knowing in this case.’ That person won’t know that we need him unless our story gets out there.
“Kait wants us to finish this up so she can move on.”
“She’s sent you another dream?” Don asked.
“She wrote me a good-bye note.”
I knew how ridiculous that sounded, but Don didn’t smile; he simply nodded and waited for me to continue.
“In the dream I was seated at a desk in a junior high classroom, leafing through a book about the Civil War. I turned a page, and out fell a note in Kait’s handwriting. It was all folded up like one of those origami paper puzzles, and when I finally got it open, there were only four sentences:
I wanted to leave a note to tell you good-bye. I’m sorry things turned out like they did. I never told you how much I liked you. You were my favorite teacher.
“At first I thought she’d left it for one of her schoolteachers. Then I realized she meant it for me.”
“It’s not very sentimental.” I could tell that Don wanted more for me, something effusive to cling to when grief overwhelmed me.
“Kait was my student before she was my daughter.”
“Why do you think she left the note in a history book?”
“I think the significance must be the War Between the States,” I said. “In the Civil War our nation was divided against itself. In her final days that’s just how it was with Kait—she was torn between her love for Dung and her commitment to doing what she knew in her heart was right.”
The next time I talked with Robin I told her the book was almost finished, and she said there was something more she wanted me to add.
“The way Kait died was written into her script,” she said. “There was nothing that you or Daddy could have done to prevent it.”
“If we hadn’t let her go out—if we’d physically restrained her—”
“Nothing you did would have made any difference,” Robin said. “If it hadn’t happened that night, it would have happened the next night. I saw the hole in her face when I told her good-bye, Mother. The bullet that hit her cheek went straight into God’s fingerprint.”
It is September 18, 1991.
Kait is twenty-one years old today.
I have brought my gifts to the cemetery—a huge pot of yellow chrysanthemums and the manuscript box that holds her story.
“The ending will come,” I tell her. “There will be an ending.”
I have come equipped with a note that I tape to the grave marker: Rod—Get in touch with Kait’s parents! He probably won’t remember the date of her birthday, but there’s always a chance he might bring another bouquet. I open the box and read Betty’s prediction aloud:
It will come that there will be the unveiling of the truth. … There will be those who will be caught and exposed, and it will be for this family to come to see and know what it is that Kait will have been dealing with in her final day.
“You did a good job,” I tell Kait. “You made some mistakes, but you cleaned up after yourself. I’m proud to be your mother.”
The purpose of Kaitlyn is not lost in this time. … She will have been true to herself to the end, and this also she must accept.
“It’s time for you to go on to whatever comes next for you.”
Can I really exist in a world that doesn’t have Kait in it?
I can do that, I tell myself.
Given that there’s no choice, then, I can do that.
A breeze, still soft with the lingering sweetness of summer, moves through the branches of the elm tree that shadows Kait’s grave, and a leaf breaks free and sails down to land on the manuscript.
Just another small death out of season.
I strain to hear the lilt of Kait’s voice in the breeze, but, of course, I do not. All I hear is the rumble of cars on the freeway—the raucous squawks of a nasty brigade of crows—the rattle of a plastic windmill on a neighboring grave.
I don’t have the powers of a medium; I am only a mother whose psychic abilities end at the edges of the heart.
But I do have one thing going for me, I am a writer, and I have the ability to create scenes. I close my eyes, and on the darkened screen of my eyelids, I produce the image of my daughter as I most want to see her. Tall and strong and lovely, Kait stands before me; her eyes sparkle with unquenchable mischief, her glorious honey-colored hair is splashed with sunlight, God’s fingerprint is once again just an innocent dimple, oddly positioned on the ridge of her smooth, tan cheek.
She raises her hand in a comical half salute, just as she did on the night she walked out of our lives.
Later! I’ll see you guys later!
“Good-bye!” I tell her. “Try to stay out of trouble, honey! Next time I want you to keep an eye out for wolves!”
I am wasting my breath, for she is already striding away from me and my words go fluttering after her like a battalion of butterflies. Impatient for new adventure, she eagerly pushes aside the veil and, without so much as a backward glance at the teacher, steps joyfully, confidently forward into the light.
Kait Arquette at age 5. “God’s fingerprint,” the indentation on the left cheekbone, is where the first bullet struck.
Epilogue
WHEN YOU REACH AN advanced age and look back over your lifetime, it can seem to have had a consistent order and plan, as though composed by some novelist. Events that when they occurred had seemed accidental and of little moment turn out to have been indispensable factors in the composition of a consistent plot. So who composed that plot? … Just as your dreams are composed by an aspect of yourself of which your consciousness is unaware, so, too, your whole life is composed by the will within you. And just as people whom you will have met apparently by mere chance become leading agents in the structuring of your life, so, too, will you have served unknowingly as an agent, giving meaning to the lives of others. …
It is even as though there were a single intention behind it all, which always makes some kind of sense, though none of us knows what the sense might be, or has lived the life that he quite intended.
Joseph Campbell
The law office of James Michael MacPhee, who, along with the Vietnamese paralegal Duc Minh Nguyen, was arrested for insurance fraud in January 1993, was at one of the addresses shown on Bao Tran’s business card.
Afterword
THE HARDCOVER EDITION OF Who Killed My Daughter? was published in the United States in June 1992, and Lois toured the country with the book. Starting with Good Morning, America and Larry King Live, she appeared on radio and television shows from coast to coast to relate Kait’s story and plead with informants to come forward.
And information did trickle in to fill in some of the gaps in the Arquette family’s scenario.
An occupant of an apartment complex across from Kait’s high school wrote to say that one of the Hispanic suspects knew the Vietnamese through parties held in an apartment there. He also said that at the time of Kait’s murder, the tenant in whose apartment the parties were held was driving a VW bug without an engine cover that matched the description of the car seen fleeing the murder site.
Lois passed this info
rmation on to the district attorney, as it seemed to provide a possible connection between Dung Nguyen’s friends and the Hispanics.
Nobody followed up on it.
In July 1992, Marty Martinez phoned the police and voluntarily confessed to murder-for-hire, saying he and his friends were hired by the Vietnamese to kill Kait. The confession was not made public until ten days later when a newspaper reporter stumbled upon the police report. It was five more days before Marty was finally interrogated, at which time he recanted, saying he was drunk when he confessed. He was not arrested and was not given a polygraph test.
Sergeant Lowe told the press, “We’re not working on anything now. … [The Arquette girl’s murder] is kind of sitting on the back burner.”
After reading the book, investigators at the National Insurance Crime Bureau and the Fraud Division of the California State Insurance Agencies contacted Lois for more information about the car wreck scam.
On August 5, 1992, two lawyers in Orange County were arrested and charged with spearheading a major auto insurance fraud ring. One lawyer was also under suspicion of solicitation to commit murder by putting out a contract to kill a witness who had been shown how the car wrecks were set up.
California State Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi stated that this breakthrough was significant, because although lawyers are often at the heart of fraud rings, they are seldom charged because they delegate the work to subordinates and then deny any knowledge of the crimes.
In reporting the arrests on the CBS Evening News, news anchor Connie Chung cited Who Killed My Daughter? as “a true story in which a grieving mother claims her daughter was murdered when she was about to go to the police.”
One prominent California law firm that represents insurance companies in connection with fraudulent claims involving auto accidents purchased thirty copies of the book to distribute to contacts throughout the insurance industry and in law enforcement.
On January 13, 1993, there was a record-setting crackdown in Southern California that led to over forty arrests of people involved in four loosely connected insurance fraud rings. An additional seventy suspects were under investigation. Many of those arrested were doctors and lawyers in Orange County, and several of the Vietnamese car wreck “victims” were from Albuquerque.