Eventually Scott secured the car seat, and they headed to the park. The threesome strolled through the park and began to bond that day, even as the pregnant Laci Peterson prepared for the arrival of her unborn son.
Amber told the detectives that her two-year-old daughter seemed to be drawn to Scott. As the three were crossing over a walking bridge, however, little Ayiana reached out to hold hands with both adults, and for some reason Scott declined to take the girl’s hand. Mixing up her medical terms. Amber told the detectives that she thought that Scott said he had “rigor mortis” in his hands—a possible reference to arthritis.
Nevertheless, she recounted, “He had a smile plastered on his face.” “I just can’t stop smiling,” he told her, beaming. “This is just so awesome.” Finding a spot in the park for their picnic, the three of them relaxed together until dusk, when they returned to Amber’s apartment.
When they got there, Scott presented a gift he’d brought for Ayiana. It was a child’s pop-up version of The Night Before Christ-mas. During an interview with police, Scott volunteered that he and Laci had spent time at Barnes & Noble two weeks before her disappearance and that they had purchased children’s books. Did Scott purchase Ayiana’s present on that trip.’ Or, as Scott’s half sister, Anne Bird, suspects, could this have been the very gift Anne gave Laci at her baby shower?
After Ayiana went to bed. Amber and Scott stayed up talking, In a tender moment. Amber showed Scott pictures of herself when she was pregnant, just ten days before Ayiana was horn. Back home, Scott’s own wife had only weeks to go with her pregnancy. Her due date was February 10—Amber Frey’s birthday.
Scott offered to get a hotel room that night rather than staying with her, but Amber encouraged him to stay, and he did. They were intimate again that night.
The following day, Scott called Amber to tell her that he’d be in town around four or five o’clock. “Seeing as you are going to be in town anyway … would you mind picking my daughter up for me so that Fm not late?” Amber asked. “And he goes, ‘Oh, I’d be honored to. Do you think she would come with me?’ And I go, ‘Yeah. You know, we spent the day yesterday.’”
Brocchini and Buehler sat silently as Amber derailed the events of her third date with Scott.
“When I came home,” she said, “it was six o’clock, probably al-most six-thirty. Ayiana was in her high chair eating, he was in the kitchen. There was wine on the table. There was bread—^he cut the bread and spread the pesto on it—and he had dinner in the oven, and I was like, ‘Wow.’’” The perfect man had waltzed into her life.
Amber and Scott took Ayiana out later that evening to pick out a Christmas tree. When he was interviewed later by police, the worker at Cobbs Ranch Christmas Tree Farm commented that Ayiana’s “parents” had dressed the little girl more warmly than themselves. Scott grinned the whole time.
When they got home, Scott, Amber, and Ayiana began trimming the tree. At one point, Amber asked Scott if he had ever been married. Not surprisingly, Scott said no.
“Ever been close?” Amber asked Scott.
“No,” he replied.
Scott shared Amber’s bed again that evening, and the two talked about trust. He left in the morning, telling Amber that he was headed to San Francisco.
During those first few days. Amber said, there was almost no indication of anything amiss. The one exception, she said, was when Scott’s cell phone rang on either December 2 or December 3, and he had to “step outside” to rake the call. Scott implied that the call was business-related and said there was “gonna be a lot of yelling.”
Scott called Amber a couple of times before their next meeting on December 9. That day he telephoned, saying he was attending a meeting in nearby Merced. Was she free to see him?
Scott arrived dressed in a conservative blue suit, an International Rotary Club pin fastened to his lapel. “When he came to my house, he was very upset,” Amber recounted. “Very distraught about something he had done that was very devastating to what possibly could be a beautiful relationship. He said, i need you to come in here.’ He moved the chairs. He sat in that chair. … I was sitting there. He was pretty mad, was up pacing a little bit, and I was like, ‘Okay, what is it?’ And he said, ‘It’d be so much easier if you just hated me and you didn’t wanna see me again and I just, I hate myself so much right now.’
“Then he talked to me about lying and then he goes, ‘I just had such a horrible weekend this week and it wasn’t fun for anybody ‘cause I—this was on my mind.’ And I was like, ‘What?’ I’m holding his hand and he was crying, his stomach kept churning and he was having trouble swallowing and tears were pouring down out of his eyes. And he said, ‘I lied to you about being, you asked me if I’d been married and I have. But it’s, he goes, ‘in my past and it’s so hard for me because I just, I’ve had such a hard time deaHng with’ … and I said okay.”
“I’m thinking, well, she passed away. And he goes … ‘I haven’t said very much, but obviously you know that she’s not with me. And I wanted to be able to talk to you about this and I was going to talk to you about this when I came back from Europe.’ He goes, ‘This was on my mind and I had to let it all out.’ And I was like, ‘Okay. I’m sorry this was so hard for you to tell me and I thank you for sharing this with me. And, I, you know, there will be time for you to share more.’ And he’s like …” Amber paused, then sighed, “… taking breaths and having trouble swallowing.”
Scott asked, “You’re not mad?” “How can I be mad?” she asked. “That’s understandable if you have a loss. I said, ‘Were you ready for me?’ and he said, ‘Oh, yes. Amber, absolutely yes,’ then he said, ‘This will be the first holidays without her.’”
Still sobbing, Scott announced, “‘Well, I should go. You need time to think about this.’ And I go, ‘Why would I need time to think?’ And he goes, ‘Well because it’s new, you know. And I lied to you.’”
Scott seemed to be suggesting that their relationship was in trouble. He was headed to Europe on business, and when he returned they could talk again and see how things were between them.
Amber confessed to Brocchini and Buehler that she had no idea Scott was lying to her. His intense, emotional explanation was just that convincing. Rather than relive the pain of his past situation, Scott said, he would often tell people he was never married. Still, she remained concerned that he was not telling her everything.
They had already made plans to go to a birthday party for Shawn’s fiance on December 11, as well as to attend a formal Christmas party on December 14. Amber asked if he still intended to ac-company her to the party on the eleventh, as planned.
“Do you still want me to go with you?” Scott asked.
Amber said her response was affirmative. “Absolutely, yes, I want you to be there,” she said she told Scott.
It was then. Amber explained, that Scott seemed to have a change of heart and decided to stay that evening. She said he sat down on the couch and they chatted. She sought to soothe his nerves.
“You are just amazing …” Scott told her. “I am just so intrigued by you.”
On Wednesday, December 11, Scott came back to Madera, and he and Amber went to the Fashion Fair Mall in Fresno to pick up a tuxedo.
“You know how he paid?” Brocchini asked.
“Credit card,” Amber responded.
Scott told her he had business in San Francisco on the night of the twelfth, but would be back on the fourteenth for the party. Amber arranged for her mother to baby-sit. “He came to my door with a dozen red roses,” Amber explained. “He gave me a big hug and a kiss and [said], ‘Oh, I missed you,’ and he goes, ‘Well, I hope you have more vases.’ I said, ‘Why?’ And he said, ‘Because these are for you, too.’ And he pulls out two more dozen roses.”
“If it’s ever too good to be true, it is,” Brocchini chuckled.
“I know,” Amber responded. “So, I’m not done. So we get to the intimate details?”
“No, not yet, go
ahead, you’re going in good order there,” Brocchini instructed.
Amber explained that the intimate details were next.
“Oh okay, yeah.”
“I looked down and there was a single rose that was odd from all of ‘em, and I pulled it out and I said, ‘What’s with this single rose?’ and he said, ‘Well, you have a candle?’ And I said, yeah. He said, ‘Can you get the candle?’ Sure. So I get the candle, he shuts the light out and lights it and says, ‘Well, I, this is all I could think about in San Francisco when I woke up today.’ So he cuts the rose, the stem off, and it’s just, you know, a short stem at this point with the rose.
“He started—he starts rubbing the rose on my face and kissing me, and he said that … ah, he was just talking about his dream that he had. And then he leaned me up against the wall and was rubbing the rose down my neck and he was saying, ‘I don’t know how it feels to have a rose rubbed all over me, but this is how I woke up.’ His dream, apparently, that he was having. And he unzipped my top that I had on and was kissing me and ah, it was pretty, you know, intense.
“I was gonna take, he had a jacket on still and he goes, ‘You know how this dream ends?’ I’m like. Oh. It was very sexual. There was not intercourse at this point and then he got up and said, ‘You know I kept trying to go back to sleep to finish it, but I couldn’t.’ ”
Before Amber and Scott left for the formal, however, she con-fronted Scott again about his marriage. She told him that she now knew that he’d explained his marital status to her two days before be-cause Shawn had confronted him. “Well, I was gonna come to you after I came back from Europe, was gonna see where things were with us … but then she confronted me,” Amber quoted Scott as saying.
“That bothers me,” Amber told him. “And he goes, ‘I know, I’m sorry, but that was—it was wrong.’ ”
Scott continued. “There’s things that I’ve been thinking about that I just hope that you can trust me enough that in a decision that would affect you and Ayiana, that you would be able to say yes, and trust me in that.’ … And I said … ‘Can I trust you with my heart?’ And he goes, ‘Well, that’s up to you in being able to trust me and make decisions about things,’ ” Amber said.
Amber was wearing a form-fitting red dress, her highlighted blond hair swept up on her head, and Scott was handsomely attired in his tuxedo when the two left Amber’s house for the party. As they stepped outside, she told the detectives, it started to “sprinkle,” so Scott swept her up and carried her to the truck.
At the formal, the couple mingled, drank, ate, and posed for photos. It was around 3:00 A.M. when they returned to Amber’s place. ‘T don’t think we slept that night, ‘cause we were intimate and [at] one point, early morning, there was no protection at all,” she told the detectives.
“I’ve already talked to him about being on birth control,” Amber explained. “That was something I hadn’t been on for years. … He was aware of that and the possibilities, and he said, ‘Oh, that’s not fair of me to do that.’ And then he starts telling me about vasectomy. And I said what.? You don’t want to have children? And he goes, ‘No, Amber. Assuming we’re together, I can only think of one child, which would be Ayiana.’ ” Scott’s desire for a vasectomy at the age of thirty troubled her.
“That was, ah, the fifteenth?” Buehler inquired.
“The fifteenth,” Amber confirmed.
The day after the party, she and Scott dropped off the tuxedo and went over his schedule for upcoming business trips. Scott said he was on his way to San Francisco, with stops in Arizona and Stockton, California, for meetings before he returned to Sacramento. But those meetings were still open-ended, he cautioned, leaving Amber the impression that there was a chance they could get to see each other again soon. “I go, ‘Wow, then I might get to see you again.’ And he goes, ‘Yeah.’”
Scott called Amber on December 19 and told her he was in Arizona, near the New Mexico border. During the call. Amber told Scott that she had an appointment with the gynecologist later that week to ask about getting back on birth control, but Scott did not want to talk about such a personal subject over the phone. They could discuss it when he returned from his travels.
“Assuming we are together, I only want to think of one child and that would be Ayiana,” Scott said again.
Their next phone conversation was on the twenty-third. Scott claimed he was in Maine, duck hunting with his dad. Amber told police she thought Scott was calling from the shower because she could hear water running in the background.
“I go, ‘You in water?’ … And he goes, ‘Yeah, you caught me again, I’m in the bathtub.’”
Amber thought this was odd, but she speculated that the shower may have been one of the few places in his home Scott could call without family or friends hearing him.
Scott didn’t call on Christmas Eve. But on the twenty-fifth “he called me in the morning and then again at night,” said Amber.
“We talked a little while and there was a woman in the background,” Amber recounted. “He told me it was his mom.” At one point, she recalled, Scott told the woman that she couldn’t come sit down next to him. “But he didn’t say my name when he said that to her.”
“On the twenty-seventh, he called me from Boston,” Amber continued. Scott claimed he was flying out the next morning on a 7:45 A.M. flight to Europe.
“On the twenty-eighth, I decided to call him around four-something P.M., and he answered his phone.”
“Hum,” Buehler commented.
“I was, like, thinking, God, he’s supposed to be in Paris right now. His phone wouldn’t work. He goes, ‘Hello.-’ Hello?’” Then he hung up the phone and called her back right away.
“I said, ‘Where are you?’ And he said, ‘I’m in New York. The plane was delayed, and I missed the 8:30.’ And I was like, ‘Why didn’t you call me earlier? It’s already the end of the day here.’ And he goes, ‘You’re right, I shoulda called you. I wasn’t being considerate. I’m sorry.’”
“There will be a lot of holidays where you and I will spend together,” Scott told her. Amber said Scott expressed a desire to spend a winter in New York with her, telling her “it would be so romantic.”
Amber asked Scott if he was “a promiscuous international traveler.”
“‘Outside of a relationship, when I’m not exclusive or seeing anyone … but there’s only one person I call sweetheart,’ and that’s what he always calls me, his sweetheart,” Amber said. When she related the conversation to a male friend later, her friend said that Scott sounded like a player, who probably used the term “sweetheart” so that he wouldn’t confuse the names of his various lovers.
Then Amber made a suggestion to the police: Perhaps she could tell Scott that she was pregnant? “1 have had my period,” she said. “He doesn’t know that, though.”
“So, you’re suggesting that we could probably use that as a ruse or something like that?” Buehler asked.
“Yes,” Amber responded. “Because we were unprotected after … so it, it could have been possible, I could have gotten pregnant. Very possible.”
“Um, hum, okay,” Buehler nodded. The detectives did not pursue Amber’s suggestion. Detective Buehler quickly changed the subject, and there’s no indication from other police records that the idea was ever seriously discussed.
Buehler wanted to know exactly when Amber learned of Laci Peterson.
On Saturday, December 28, Amber had gotten together with her friend Denise Lane. Amber was already curious about Scott’s marital status, so she and Denise conducted an Internet search using his name. They got a number of hits for Scott Peterson in San Luis Obispo and Sacramento.
The next day she got a call from her friend Richard Byrd, a police officer in Fresno. He suspected that Scott Peterson from the Laci Peterson missing persons case in Modesto was the same man she was dating. “Richard read me a little article about him and his wife and what he is going through and about him being a nice guy,” Amber said,
clearing her throat. “And friends and family are out; he’s not ruled out, but he’s not... ”
“Uh-huh,” Buehler responded. “He’s a big suspect.”
“Well, the paper’s not saying that,” Brocchini noted.
“That’s true, we’re not telling ‘em that,” Buehler replied.
CHAPTER SEVEN
DECEMBER 31, 2002, NEW YEAR’S EVE
The day after her first meeting with the pohce, Amber and Scott exchanged messages before speaking at 4:18 P.M.
“Amber?”
“Hi.” Amber remained composed.
“Amber, if you can hear me, it’s New Year’s.” Scott spoke over the static on the line. As he spoke, a tiny recorder attached to Amber’s cell phone hummed away, capturing every word he said.
“I know, I can hear you,” Amber responded.
“Amber, are you there?” Scott spoke into the phone.
“Are you having a good time?”
“Amber, hey, Happy New Year,” Scott said.
“Happy New Year,” Amber replied.
Scott began to spin an amazing story for his girlfriend. “I’m near the Eiffel Tower for the New Year’s celebration,” he said. “It’s unreal, the crowd is huge.” It was another of the grandiose lies that Scott seemed to use to bolster his ego. He did not realize that the composed young woman on the other end knew she was being scammed.
He told Amber that he had been trying to find a quiet place to call her. With all the celebratory noise, he claimed, it was hard to hear. Of course, he had never left California.
“The crowd’s huge?” Amber asked.
“Amber, if you are there, I can’t hear you right now, but I’ll call you on your New Year’s,” Scott told her. There was crackling on the line, as if the caller were actually thousands of miles away.
“Okay, I’ll hear from you then.” Amber responded.
“Amber, Amber, I miss ya. I’ll see ya soon,” Scott said, before the call clicked off.
The phone rang again. It was Scott calling back.
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