Seated in the living room at the end of a sofa with Aaron in a light blue armchair at his left and the grandmother opposite in a matching chair, Moffat thanked Mrs. Jamison for allowing the visit. Looking directly at Aaron with an expression of concern, Moffat asked him how he was.
“I…um…” Aaron’s voice cracked but he quickly regained control. “I’m really sorry for what I did…I should have…It was a mistake.”
Mrs. Jamison’s poodle jumped into Aaron’s lap and panting, stared at the grandmother. Aaron patted its head.
Moffat nodded. “It could have been a tragedy. We were all worried.” He paused. “I’m glad to hear this from you. I’ll tell the other officers what you said.”
Mrs. Jamison rose and walked behind Aaron, placing both hands on his shoulders. “Captain, I’m not going to make excuses for myself or my grandson. For most of his life, I let myself give in to the effects of my stroke, my medication, alcohol…well, just depression in general. The other adults in his life let him down and so did I. I am ashamed at how weak I let myself become. Now things are going to be different. Aaron has moved in here with me and I am going to look after him.” She paused, gazing at Moffat for a hint of a reaction. Seeing none, she continued. “I know I’m an old hen but I’ve got enough years left to see my only grandson become an adult.” Mrs. Jamison’s voice was steely; her eyes clear, fixed on Moffat. At that moment, he believed she would keep that commitment.
Moffat nodded then said “Now I’d like to ask a few questions about the revolver you took to school, Aaron. Where did you get it?”
Aaron, who had blushed intensely during his grandmother’s speech to Moffat, now answered without hesitation or discomfort. “We had it at the apartment. It was in the drawer of a desk in the place where you first come in.”
“You mean the entryway?” his grandmother offered. She had never been in any of the apartments, duplexes or rental homes Aaron and his mother had lived in the last ten years.
“Yeah. It’s where she puts her mail. There’s a mirror above it.”
“Did you know when your mother acquired the gun? Did she buy it?”
“No. It was a Christmas gift from my aunt. Ronnie gave it to her the year before last.”
“Unusual gift.”
“Ronnie said a woman should be able to protect herself. She was talking about how my mother would work late. My mother just put it in the drawer and left it there.”
Moffat nodded. “It wasn’t new. The gun was manufactured several years before Mrs. Gillis gave it to your mother. Did you ever hear where Mrs. Gillis obtained the gun?”
“Yeah. She said it was one she already had, that she would get a new one or something. She had a lot of guns and rifles…a whole collection.”
A worry began to nag at the back of Moffat’s mind. He almost regretted having to ask more questions along the path he would now explore.
“Mrs. Jamison, what can you tell me about any firearms your daughter owned?”
“My daughter inherited a love of guns from her father, my second husband. When she was young, we belonged to a gun club. She enjoyed target shooting. Well, so did I. We did it mostly there at the range but sometimes in the back of our property, far enough away from anyone. It was always safe. My husband wasn’t much of a hunter. He loved guns though and believed it was important for our family to be able to protect ourselves. Not that there was much crime in those days. I haven’t thought about those guns in years. I guess I remember he gave Ronnie his collection when we divorced.”
“Do you know where your daughter kept her guns?”
“No.”
“She has a special closet in her bedroom.” Aaron said. It was clear he was relieved at the shift in focus of the conversation from himself to his aunt. He was eager to be helpful to Moffat.
“Could I see it, Mrs. Jamison?”
“I can show you but it’s locked,” Aaron answered.
“Do you know where the key is?”
“Yes, I do. Come into Ronnie’s office.”
Moffat and Mrs. Jamison followed the teenager down the hall and through the doorway. Moffat had seen the room the first night when Wade Gillis showed Moffat and De la Peña to his wife’s computer. Aaron slid the mirrored door of a closet to the right and pointed to a wooden cabinet attached to the wall on the left side of the closet.
Aaron pulled on the door of the cabinet. It did not move. “Oh. It’s locked,” he said. “The key is on Ronnie’s key ring. I don’t know where it is.”
Moffat crossed the room to the desk, opened the top right drawer and removed a ring of keys. He selected a candidate, slid it into the keyhole and opened the cabinet on the first try. Several dozen keys were labeled and hanging on teacup hooks screwed into the wood back of the cabinet.
Aaron reached in and selected a silver key with a black label. The three then walked to the end of the hall and entered a large master bedroom suite. There was a short hall leading beyond the bed to a spacious bathroom. Just there, Aaron stopped and opened a closet door with the key revealing an area about two feet deep and four feet wide. Several rifles and a shotgun were mounted artistically on carved maple supports. To the left there were shelves with at least eight handguns. Another maple chest of drawers was under the shelves. Moffat pulled them open one at a time and saw a variety of ammunition boxes, cleaning tools and supplies. Looking again at the weapons, Moffat noted that they were of varying sizes - one rifle and one shotgun were at least a hundred years old - but were uniformly in excellent condition.
“Moffat closed the door and locked it. “Please don’t let anyone disturb the contents of this closet.”
“Yes, Captain,” Mrs. Jamison replied.
“You’ll tell Mr. Gillis for me, please?”
She nodded.
“Also, I’d like to keep this key, if you don’t mind.”
“I think that is a good idea, Captain Moffat,” she said, watching Aaron walk back toward the living room. He was oblivious to the thought running through both their minds that it was unwise to allow him access to firearms, no matter how well he appeared at this moment.
Moffat and Mrs. Jamison sat in their original positions around the coffee table, Moffat at the end of the sofa, the elderly lady opposite. Aaron sat in the center of the sofa to Moffat’s right, leaning his left shoulder against the back, facing his body toward Moffat. Moffat now asked a question expecting the answer to sting his own ego, just a bit.
“Mrs. Jamison, do you know if your daughter was in the habit of carrying a gun in her car, purse or maybe a brief case?”
“I don’t know,” she said softly.
“Yes, she said she did,” Aaron began, even before Moffat turned to ask. “Don’t you remember, Grandma, at that Christmas dinner? She thought my mother should take her gun to work with her. Wade and my mother told her they didn’t think it was a good idea.”
Moffat watched a brief flash of happiness on the lady’s face at hearing the boy address her as “Grandma.” She said only “Oh.”
“Did you ever see another gun resembling the one…uh…that was the Christmas gift to your daughter-in-law?” Moffat stopped himself from referring to it a second time as the revolver Aaron had taken to school.
“I don’t know what it looked like.”
Moffat thought for a moment. He had noticed a laptop on the dining room table when he entered the living room. Now he asked about it. Aaron jumped from the sofa and moved quickly to the table.
Mrs. Jamison smiled. “It’s new. I am spoiling my grandson, making up for lost time. Children need computers for school these days.”
At Moffat’s request, Aaron searched for and found a photograph of a Lady Smith revolver. He frowned when he saw the photo then brightened again when Moffat stood behind him, looked at the screen and thanked him for his help.
“Here is a picture of the gun I was asking about.”
Mrs. Jamison walked to the table, noticeably slower than her movements through the house just moments b
efore. “I don’t remember seeing a gun like that.”
“All right. Well, thank you for your time, Mrs. Jamison, Aaron.”
“Captain?” Aaron appeared to be steeling himself for his next words.
“Yes?”
“Would you tell Sergeant De la Peña I’m sorry?” Aaron expressed himself in a deep, serious voice that Moffat would have expected from someone ten years older.
“Yes, Aaron, I will. He’ll be glad to hear it. We both hope to see you doing well now. If there is ever anything bothering you, any problem at school or in town, call this number and ask for the Sergeant or me.” He handed Aaron his business card. Aaron held the card to his face, reading it with great interest. He pulled a wallet from the back pocket of his jeans and slipped it in a plastic sleeve, between his library card and his California Identification card. He returned the wallet to his pocket with a confident smile.
~ ~ ~
CHAPTER 34
Duncan and Fat followed State Route 78, climbing into the foothills northwest of Segovia. The valley oaks and grass-covered fields gradually gave way to a mix of oaks, pines and bare granite. After about five miles, they took County Road 123, a paved one-lane road almost due north, gaining a total of about two thousand feet of elevation. Fortunately, Fat had accurately estimated the distance to the next turn as the entrance to the dirt road that would take them to the kennel was nearly obscured by a large granite boulder and three forty foot diseased and dying pines. The dirt road followed a slow z up a mountain. At a second 120-degree turn, their path was blocked by a steel security gate with a combination lock. Noting that the last interview subject had not mention a gate, Duncan observed that it might have been installed in the last six years. They pulled the car as far to the right as possible, and prepared to walk the rest of the way.
“That guy was right. This is out in the middle of nowhere. Duncan pulled a leather bag over her shoulder containing, among other things, her Glock 19 compact pistol. Fat wore his gun on a shoulder harness, hidden under a gray windbreaker. He carried a vinyl bag with DNA sample kits. The road continued to rise about a half mile, then turned back and descended 250 feet into a fairly large meadow--completely hidden from the public road--continuing to a farmhouse and other structures matching the citizen’s description.
Before much farther, the officers apparently reached earshot of the kennels. A growing chorus of yapping began and did not stop.
The farmhouse seemed to be in good condition. Solar panels and a satellite dish had been added to the slate roof. Fat knocked on the front door as Duncan, thinking of the scene described earlier that day, peered around the corner of the house.
“No sign of life,” Duncan said.
“Couldn’t you find a better way to phrase that?”
“Yeah.” Both officers felt uneasy.
They moved around the house and saw a wire-fenced yard containing several dozen chickens and a wooden coop. The barking drowned out the sound of the chickens until the officers drew nearer. Beyond this yard farther behind the house was a neatly maintained garden with mature plants of peas, lettuce, broccoli and cabbage.
The officers backtracked to the driveway in front of the house. Curtains were drawn at every window. At a ninety-degree angle from the house, a one-car garage stood, its wooden door latched and locked on both sides. In front of the garage, patches of new spring growth of grass among gravel and dirt showed evidence of recent vehicle movement with some blades flattened and smeared against the rocks.
Beyond the garage, the officers discovered the first kennel. About twenty dogs of varying sizes, all schnauzers, ran about and jumped against a cyclone fence, their attention riveted on Duncan and Fat.
“The dogs look healthy,” Fat said. Kneeling, he pushed a swab through the wires into the mouth of one barking, full grown dog. Moving it quickly within its mouth, he was satisfied he had collected an adequate specimen. He repeated the task with three more dogs.
At the edge of the field, next to the hill, there was a man-made pond about the size and shape of a baseball infield. An earthen mound held back the water between two natural hillocks.
A large barn was at the end of the gravel driveway. Though old, it was sturdy, its doors locked with padlocks and, Duncan and Fat discovered walking the perimeter, its windows opaque from wax. At the back corner of the barn they found a second kennel and yard, containing about 15 dogs. Fat looked at Duncan, shrugged and dropped to his knees to take another DNA sample. During the next two minutes, as they took cheek swabs from several more dogs, three rifle shots echoed in the distance. They weren’t so far off for the officers to disregard, however, and separately both officers considered their vulnerability to a sniper from the woods above the meadow. Fat attempted to swab the cheek of one dog. It backed away. He spoke soothingly to another nearby. It moved to him and tried to chew the swab as he ran it across its gums.
“Ok. Let’s go, Jane.”
* * *
En route to the station, Fat phoned the office of the County Director of Animal Control. A few minutes checking by personnel there established that there was no record of a kennel licensed at this location.
~ ~ ~
CHAPTER 35
Back in his car at the bottom of the Gillis’ driveway, Moffat made a quick call to James Rees. Did Rees ever know Gillis to have a gun in her possession, he asked. Rees knew of a collection but never saw her with a gun in public or anywhere around the office. One other source, Moffat thought. He drove into Miner’s Flat, executed a quick u-turn and parked in front of the diner. Donna Ferguson met him at the door and walked with him to the booth at the far end of the window - the booth that until last week was usually reserved for Veronica Gillis.
Two cups of coffee and a small pitcher of half and half were placed on the table.
“Would you like a slice of pie, Captain?” Ferguson slipped into the seat opposite him. “We have a blackberry we just baked this morning. Still warm.”
“No, thank you. But thank you for the coffee.”
Ferguson took a sip from her cup holding it in front of her mouth as she beamed at Moffat.
“Mrs. Ferguson, did Veronica Gillis ever carry a handgun? Maybe in her purse or the glove compartment of her car?”
“Oh, yes. She loved guns. Even going back to junior high. I remember she showed some of us a gun at her parents house after school once when they were both at work.” Ferguson shook her head with a smile. “I know it sounds bad, but we didn’t think much of it at the time. I guess it’s just as well not to know every crazy thing your kids do.”
“I see,” Moffat said.
“Oh, and something else. She got into trouble once about ten years ago. Maybe I should say she got a cop into trouble. She was parked in some neighborhood in Segovia, waiting between appointments to show houses. Somehow, he spotted a gun in the front seat and brought her into the station. She didn’t appreciate being treated like a criminal. By the time it was over, the cop apologized to her. It was never in the paper but the story made the rounds among the gossips here in town. Ronnie told me she was very kind to the policeman after he apologized. I think she got him a deal on a new house, maybe. That was the way she was…She would throw her weight around but never make a real enemy because that person might be a customer the next time around.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Ferguson...sorry, Donna.” Moffat took a long drink from his cup. “Do you remember if Cheryl Haugen was among the girls Mrs. Gillis showed the hand gun to?”
“Oh, yes. She would have been. We all hung out together in those days. I remember her squealing when Ronnie opened the box with the gun.”
* * *
At five p.m., De la Peña stood to the side of a window in the second story storage room above the Segovia Hardware store peering through binoculars at the entrance to the laundromat. He could see everyone entering or passing the shop from the street and with the sun in it’s current position, could see several yards into the laundromat. McLean had seated herself at a chair
just within his view. He watched her slowly flip through the pages of a magazine. He also had a great view of her legs. That thought sprinted through his mind and when it had run its course was replaced by the realization that he was beginning to feel hungry. De la Peña was accustomed to three meals and three (or more) snacks per day. This had been one of those days when work absorbed his entire attention, time moved quickly and his normal thoughts about life’s routines were crowded out. He briefly considered the question of food, congratulated himself on his problem-solving ability and decided he would phone Peake later and ask her to pick up sandwiches “to go” from Denny’s before she left her position at the restaurant. That would be around seven.
A few hours earlier, the briefing for the kickoff of this operation had gone smoothly. De la Peña explained the timeline for the next twenty-four hours, the roles each team member would play and the objectives the team hoped to accomplish. Together, they studied the operation to determine risks to the officers and public and they discussed the measures to be taken to reduce the risks. Chief Halvorsen attended. De la Peña was pleased at the professional tone of the meeting - no sarcasm, jokes or heckling even from Lang and Schoenberg. Halvorsen wished them luck.
De la Peña was also pleased to have been able to tell Moffat, when he offered to help, that the plan did not require Moffat to take up a post himself in the stakeout.
Everything had occurred according to plan up to this point. The decoy left the winery at five o’clock. Followed by Lang and Schoenberg in separate cars, she drove into town and parked in a diagonal space in front of the laundromat. Officer Travis was already inside, ostensibly to wash a down comforter in the large capacity machine. McLean opened the door to the back seat and slid a basket of women’s clothing into the crook of her arm. She grabbed a large plastic container of liquid detergent and entered the shop.