She called Pam Springer to complain of her fears now that her father surely knew where to send his private investigators to look for her. The complaints didn’t fall on deaf ears. Springer knew that Robert Peernock still had much to gain from his daughter’s untimely death before the case came to trial. And Springer feared that Peernock’s girlfriend, Sonia, might still believe in his innocence. It didn’t take much of a stretch to imagine a scenario whereby Peernock somehow managed, with outside help, to hire another attempt on his daughter.
When Tasha began to sense that the system was going to try to help them, she was elated. She checked Navy base locations around the world and dared to hope that the DA’s office might persuade the Department of the Navy to work out a transfer to some exotic faraway place. Someplace far from the courtroom madness, far from the reach of her enraged father and yet a place like Hawaii, sunny and inviting.
In April the orders came through for a transfer to Adak, Alaska.
She rushed to a map. She looked, looked some more, took turns looking with her husband, nearly ruined her eyes searching the map, then finally found it: a tiny spec of an island off the Alaskan coast, near the Russian mainland. Close to the mainland. It has a population of about five thousand military personnel and dependents, living on a chunk of frozen tundra.
The perfectly linear reasoning of military intelligence had indeed answered the call to find someplace safe for this young woman whose father seemed bent on destroying her. The army had simply marched in step with the witness protection program’s main philosophy.
They can’t hurt you if they can’t find you.
The rules at Adak, as it turned out, were pretty simple. The guard/escort filled them in as soon as they arrived, talking fast to get his points across before the couple developed that glassy-eyed look people tend to take on as soon as they have the chance to walk around and see where they are.
“Relax,” he told them. “Not a problem. We’re a long way from Stateside; we don’t stand on a lot of ceremony here. Hey, how much trouble can you get into, wandering around on frozen grasses and fifty-seven varieties of moss on a seabound hunk of tundra?
“Oh, and pets? Not a problem. Just keep the eats inside. We have a lot of bald eagles around here and they love to carry off cats to feed their young.
“Dogs are a little tougher, although still not a problem. That is, if you can find one. Don’t get many strays here. In fact, if your dog escapes you only get one freebie from the dog catcher. Second time, they put the dog to sleep. Have to. Can’t risk having them wander onto the airstrip. Tend to cause plane wrecks, very tough in a location where everything you eat, drink, and wear is imported by air. Definitely a problem.
“Hey, other than that, not much else to do but work on your tan. Heh-heh. We like to say that around here.
“… You guys okay?”
By summertime Robert Peernock was on his third attorney. He had accepted no suggestions that he was mentally incompetent to stand trial or that he plead insanity. He maintained that any encouragement for him to do so was of course motivated strictly by orders from the state in their attempt to sabotage his defense. He remained confidant that at trial he would prove his innocence and expose the plot to frame him, to destroy his family and neutralize the threat he presented to the vast corrupt structure of the state government.
As for his daughter, Tasha was having such difficulty in her marriage that she managed a plane ticket back to Los Angeles for a visit and stayed for two months, agonizing over whether she should try to keep working at the marriage or throw in the towel and take her chances alone in California.
She contacted Victoria from time to time, hoping for news of some progress in the probate case that would allow a little of her mother’s life insurance money to be released to her for living expenses, or even allow the sale of one of the houses. But Victoria had to keep repeating the difficult fact that while there was indeed some money in the family estate, it was tied up and would likely stay that way until Robert’s trial was heard. What Victoria didn’t tell Natasha was that she had been keeping up on the progress of the criminal case and things could have looked a lot better.
Because Robert’s position appeared defensible.
Victoria had learned much about him and was convinced that whatever whistleblowing Robert had genuinely done, it did nothing to explain the crimes. This was insight gained from bits and pieces of personal history she had picked up by helping to sort through the household goods and getting them into storage for Natasha. Most of it was stuff the jury would never see.
Robert had explanations for the explosive rigging under the car, and since juries are inclined to believe in corrupt government officials and tend to side with the noble notion of a little guy against the system, Peernock actually appeared to have a real chance of getting away with his crimes.
Further, after the battle she had been waging against his access to the family estate, Victoria knew he was madder at her than ever. Any slip-up on the part of the court could result in Peernock’s being free to come after her and Natasha once again.
She knew that Pam Springer had originally thought the case could be wrapped up in a year at the most. But that year was now ended and the trial was nowhere in sight.
Only Robert’s daughter could connect him to the awful crimes, and Natasha had already endured six days of testimony during the preliminary hearing and the Juvenile Court hearing. She had been repeatedly attacked on the witness stand and made out to be a liar. As for Victoria, it could go much worse for her if Peernock’s trial attorney decided to pursue Robert’s pet theory about Victoria Doom.
Word had filtered back to her that this theory now entailed Robert’s claim that when Claire came to Victoria for divorce advice and Victoria realized how much money the estate would be worth with Claire dead, Victoria and Claire’s boss had conspired to create a plan whereby Claire would be snatched by hired killers and set up in a fake car wreck. According to Robert’s theory, although the clumsy explosive apparatus was designed to frame Robert, its very clumsiness showed that Robert wouldn’t have done it that way. He said Tasha had been included in the car wreck to raise the insurance value of the crimes, so that Victoria and Claire’s boss could then use legal means to loot Claire’s estate.
Since the estate would fall under Victoria’s control upon Claire’s death, as indeed much of it had done despite Natasha’s control by name, this would allow Victoria to gain access to the million and a half dollars in insurance money and real estate that the family would be worth if both Claire and Natasha died in a car wreck and earned maximum payment on their life insurance policies.
And so the realization gradually pressed down upon Victoria; Robert was maneuvering her into position to take the fall for his crimes.
She had located a number of policies on Natasha, totaling $187,000 on her alone. Claire had numerous policies and one of them paid several times more in value if she died in a car wreck. But Victoria knew she could never prove that she hadn’t known any of this before Claire was killed. In the eyes of a jury, if Victoria were psychopathic enough to kill for greed, she could certainly be portrayed as having the motive.
So the story was evolving that she and Claire’s boss had conspired to murder Claire and Natasha, but had somehow convinced Steve Fisk to program Natasha into repeating a phony handcuff story while she was still in the hospital, drugged and impressionable.
Or else they had terrorized her into giving the story.
Or else they had bribed her by promising her a chance at revenge against a man who had scorned her for years, plus a hefty piece of the eventual estate payout.
In this theory, Natasha Peernock knew that her father was innocent but was glad to forgive Victoria and Claire’s boss for nearly killing her, for disfiguring her face, and for killing her mother—all in return for the chance to send Robert to prison and to get a share of whatever amount of his money might be left after all the court actions were finished.
; Victoria wanted to laugh. It was so horrid even to think such things, it seemed absurd that any twelve people could be convinced of it.
And yet she knew that the prosecution had yet to find Robert’s signature on any of the evidence.
This whole thing is rigged! It has to do with millions and millions of dollars on state contracts!
—Robert Peernock, moments before
being hauled out of the courtroom
Wouldn’t it be nice if Mommy died in a car wreck?
—Robert Peernock to his ten-year-old
daughter, according to the neighbor
who swore that she overheard it
CHAPTER
23
In April of 1989 Victoria Doom got the word that Robert Peernock had hired yet another law firm to help him try to pull money out of the estate funds to pay for building a defense. So far she had kept the accounts frozen, but now, twenty-one months after the crimes, she found herself back in court once more to answer Peernock’s assertion that the funds were his money and could not constitutionally be kept away from him and that to do so deprived him of the right to his best defense.
It is a compelling argument for any defendant to raise. And it was the same issue he had put forth at his preliminary hearing.
“The court,” he protested, “the State of California, has taken away all my property, all my possessions. I have not been convicted of any crime and yet every single thing I own in the world has been taken away from me. I do have enough money in my accounts to pay for attorneys. They have frozen all my accounts, yet I’ve not been convicted of any crime.
“This is a civil rights violation, and the state has done everything possible to make things as tough as they can for me.
“Now the court is choosing what lawyer I can have to represent me, even though I have money in my accounts to choose the attorney I want. Now, that’s certainly improper and illegal, a civil rights violation.”
Victoria found herself in Judge Rimmerman’s chambers with Robert’s new attorney, Marshal A. Oldman, who was there to formally request the funds. Victoria knew this was her cue to again take protective action in the hope that whenever the criminal case concluded, Robert Peernock’s two daughters would have something left.
But this time she walked into the chambers more convinced than ever that if this new law firm successfully opened the floodgates, Robert would spend every penny of his daughters’ future before he was through. After nearly two years behind bars, he had motivation to employ every available resource to get himself out.
No matter who suffered as a result.
And somehow after Natasha’s testimony against her father, Victoria had a hard time visualizing Peernock doing anything to help his daughter get back on her feet, even if he actually managed to beat the charges against him.
The sticking point was that no matter how aggressively any attorney would try to defend Natasha’s interests, Robert Peernock had the intelligence and skill to utilize every protection the constitution has to offer, right down to fine-print interpretations and subtle aspects of case law which most citizens wouldn’t comprehend. The pretrial courts knew that if they took a position which truly denied him any of his rights, a conviction would be worthless; they would simply be setting the stage for a mistrial or reversal upon appeal.
Every consideration had to be given to him, no matter how absurd it might sound. Thus a position that seemed perfectly reasonable on its face was going to be even harder for Victoria to repel, such as his insistence upon being allowed to use the family’s estate for his defense because he had to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Today, as soon as the hearing got started, her senses warned her that it was not going to go well.
She argued forcefully to the judge that Peernock’s access to funds could justifiably be limited because of the civil cases against the estate and because the end result of those cases partially depended on the outcome of the criminal trial. But her point was not as direct as Peernock’s very simple reliance upon the basic constitutional guarantee of the presumption of innocence.
Beneath the legal reasoning was her gut feeling that the court should deny all access to his funds because this man, who had already tried to kill his own daughter twice and also attempted to have Victoria killed, just might be inclined to use the money to try again.
Her worst fears began to take shape shortly after the session began. Judge Rimmerman agreed with Peernock’s position that if there were any funds held by the estate which legally belonged to him, they had to be released to him so that he could hire whatever attorney he wanted, especially since Peernock’s constant disputes with the state-appointed lawyers were dragging the trial far beyond the original time estimates. Once again it seemed that Peernock’s manipulation of the system’s flexibility was working.
Marshal Oldman reminded the judge that Peernock was down in his cell insisting he now realized that Gerald Fogelman, Peernock’s third criminal defense lawyer, was also working for the district attorney’s office to help rig a conviction against him. Therefore Peernock had immediate and pressing need for funds to pay for a new attorney. Furthermore, he had located one through his own trusted sources.
Victoria sighed and informed the judge that her office had been collecting and saving rents from the three income properties ever since the arrest. Half of that money belonged to Robert’s share of the estate. It would most likely come to around $40,000.
She affirmed that although she had seen Peernock’s rage at her and had read his constant attacks on Natasha in his handwritten court pleadings, she could offer no concrete proof that if he got his hands on any cash he would use it to create more lethal mischief.
But it was at this point that Victoria realized, to her great chagrin, that her emotions had begun to overwhelm her. She could feel tears welling in her eyes. Don’t do this, she ordered herself. This is just the sort of thing that sexist male lawyers make jokes about female lawyers doing under stress. Do not do this. She had never lost emotional control inside a courthouse, but it was like being a grade school kid all over again. She was without the slightest power to stop her eyes from filling up, hating her emotions for betraying her so bluntly. She stood in utter embarrassment as tears began rolling down her cheeks. “I tried to remain composed,” she said later, “but I couldn’t. I’d been fighting this case for too long without adequate resources. I just lost it.”
Judge Rimmerman had known her for years and realized that this was extraordinary behavior for a woman with a reputation for being just as tough as any situation called for her to be. He paused a moment, then asked Marshal Oldman to wait outside.
“All right, Vicki,” Rimmerman said once they were alone, “this isn’t something we usually see in here. What’s going on with you today?”
“I’m sorry, Your Honor,” she replied, chagrined. “I really am. It’s just that I can’t do this any longer. There’s nothing left. You can’t practice law on air. I’ve had to deal with Robert’s first attorney, Bradley Brunon, and respond to all of his requests while he was generating something like sixty thousand dollars in billed hours on Robert’s defense. And of course Dern, Mason and Floum dragged me into court constantly. They generated enough opposition to justify billing seventy thousand dollars for about three months of work, most of which was used as ammunition to try to get at Natasha. All of it required legal responses from my office. Then Peernock went in pro per and started filing one motion after another from inside his cell because his meals are paid for and he has nothing better to do. And I could still handle that much, but now he wants to give this new attorney forty thousand dollars to do God knows what.
“Everybody seems to have unlimited funds to fight this thing. And I’m all that stands between him and Natasha. I’m not afraid to battle it out, but this case, this damn case, is killing me. It’s killing me physically. It’s killing me emotionally. And financially, forget it.
“In a year and eight months since I took Natasha’s case, I’ve
received a total of ten thousand dollars. It takes up too much time for me to handle much other casework, but my office overhead is five thousand dollars a month in staff salary and costs. If I throw in the towel and sub out the case, what about Natasha? What if the next attorney just uses her to run up fees and leaves her with nothing? We both know it’s quite possible to do that and be perfectly within the law. I mean, her uncle told me that Claire Peernock would have wanted me to do this and I’ve come to feel so much loyalty to the girl. But now …”
She had to stop.
After a long pause, Rimmerman stood and admitted Marshal Oldman back inside. He quietly told him he could have $40,000 from the rent receipts, but only on the condition that Robert Peernock should agree that Victoria Doom could receive another $30,000 against her accumulated unpaid fees to pay her staff and catch up with her office expenses. If both sides were going all the way to the wall on this case, Rimmerman determined that they should do it on a level playing field, where the best legal position could win on its merit, not where one side simply spent the other into defeat.
Victoria sighed with relief as she left the courthouse. The new funds wouldn’t really level off the playing field after so many months of volunteer legal work. But at least she would be rolling the boulder up a gentler slope for a while.
• • •
That night Victoria stayed late at her office, trying to figure out what her next step ought to be. She slowly sifted through piles of assorted papers that she had retrieved from the Peernock house on Natasha’s behalf. As she did so, she realized that she hadn’t come as close to being driven out of the case as she had feared; all these little remnants of the family’s shattered lives were here in her hands, just as Natasha’s future was.
A Checklist for Murder Page 22