QUESTION: WHAT MAY WE KNOW ABOUT THE PERSON KAIT OBSERVED IN A DRUG TRANSACTION?
ANSWER: The person Kait observed buying drugs on the night of her death is a person of some importance. This one covets his reputation and is usually very careful about his actions, yet there will have been an instance in which a certain urgency will have overcome him, and so there will not have been the usual caution. There is a dread of discovery which will border on paranoia, and this will be part of his fear about this observation by Kait. He will not have had anything to do with the actions after that, but his followers will be involved, and this is what must be considered in the death of Kait.
“This man didn’t order Kait’s killing, but his presence is what triggered it,” Betty said. “Where did you ever come up with such far-out questions?”
I told her about Noreen and Nancy, feeling as guilty as if I were confessing to having invited three dates to the same dance. Betty surprised me by saying she thought getting input from several sources was an excellent idea.
“Psychics aren’t all alike,” she said. “Our abilities differ, and we utilize different forms of energy, so mixing and matching will give you a better-balanced picture.”
She expressed an interest in Noreen’s sketches and asked me to send her copies. When I put those into the mail, I also mailed our second set of Desert Castle photographs to Nancy Czetli and asked her if this was the place where Kait had seen the drug transaction.
Don and I left for Florida on December 14, and the mere fact of being out of Albuquerque and away from the memories it held for us was enough to make us lightheaded. In a way the happy memories were more painful than the sad ones, because they were part of a past that could never be relived.
First we flew to Orlando, where we spent two days touring Epcot and Universal Studios like children on a holiday, enjoying the sunshine and flowers and eighty-degree weather. Then we rented a car and drove to nearby Maitland, so I could interview Noreen Renier for my Woman’s Day article.
Lois Duncan with psychic Noreen Renier in Maitland, Florida
Noreen turned out to be a handsome dark-haired woman, with a strong-boned face and the lithe, trim build of a tennis player. She told us she’d had no psychic abilities as a child, and had become interested in the paranormal when she was working in public relations at a Hyatt hotel and was asked to do promotion for a lecturing medium.
“Just being around that woman had a strange effect on me,” she said. “She was very powerful, or maybe I was very sensitive. She kindled my interest, and I started reading up on the subject and began to do meditation with two of my woman friends.
“One afternoon we were meditating with our eyes closed, when all of a sudden my body felt as if somebody had plugged it into a wall socket. I heard my voice start talking all on its own, and I thought I was going crazy! I opened my eyes, and my friends were staring at me in horror. One was sipping from my coffee cup to find out what the hell I was drinking, and the other was crying because I’d given her a message from her dead mother!”
Noreen said she went through five years of laboratory testing at Duke University and at the Psychical Research Foundation before going into police work.
“At Duke they hooked me up to an EEG machine,” she said. “First they had me just be myself, and they monitored my brain waves. Then they asked me to psychomotrize an object, and they discovered I was using another part of my brain. The psychic comes from the emotional side. You don’t find as many men psychics as women, because men have been trained from childhood to suppress their emotions.”
I asked if the pictures I’d sent her were of Kait’s Desert Castle.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I get impressions in a trance, and when I come out of it I don’t remember a thing. I went back and listened to the things I said on the tape, and the place does match my description, but unless I’m channeling Kait, I don’t have any way to verify it.”
Back in our rental car I asked Don, “How did you feel about her?”
“I liked her,” he said. “And I appreciated her honesty; she doesn’t pretend to be anything more than she is.”
That Christmas was less traumatic than the previous one. We rented a couple of rooms near my stepmother’s apartment, and Robin and Brett drove over from the East Coast to join us. Even our Jewish contingent came for the holidays, dutifully terming their trip a “winter excursion.” We decorated an evergreen tree with seashells and poinsettias and, after the gift-opening ceremony, spent the day on the beach.
Christmas 1990 in Florida. Standing: Don and Lois. Second row, seated: Brett; Robin; Donnie; son-in-law Ken with Erin, 5. Seated on the floor: Kerry with Brittany, 3.
I decided to take advantage of being in Florida to research the circus book and spent a morning interviewing the “Great Wallendas.” Carla, the tightrope-walking five-year-old in my father’s photographs, was now a grandmother who owned her own circus and had fascinating stories to tell about her European ancestors.
“My grandparents would transport their circus by horse-drawn wagon from one little town to another at night,” she told me. “Between the towns they would sometimes be attacked by wolves. What they’d do would be cut loose a horse and shoot it and leave the carcass to divert the attention of the wolves while the performers got away.”
I suppressed a shudder as my mind flew back to Brett’s essay about the wolves who had broken into our flock and made off with a lamb.
Upon our return to Albuquerque we found a message from Nancy Czetli on our answering machine:
“I got the pictures you sent, and you don’t have the right house.”
Disappointment crashed down like a landslide. I had been so certain! Yet, when Don got out a city map and extended a line twelve miles to scale in a two-thirty o’clock direction, I could see that the mansion I’d photographed was too far north. With the map as our guide we spent most of New Year’s Day driving along the base of the mountains, photographing houses. There were a number of impressive residences with stucco walls, flat roofs, and semicircular driveways, but none of them could legitimately have been called a “castle.”
“There’s no way to know the origin of that term,” Don reminded me. “It might be a code name. Or maybe the owner referred to it as his ‘castle’ because it was so expensive to build.”
We took three rolls of pictures and mailed them to Nancy.
The following day we experienced another disappointment. I had a call from Paul Becht, who had heard from our private investigator in California. He had done a very poor job. Not only had he been unable to find out anything about R & J Car Leasing, but instead of investigating the lawyer, Minh Nguyen Duy, in an undercover manner, he had confronted him face-to-face at his new office in Van Nuys, California, and demanded to know what his connection was with Business Management Systems. Duy had adamantly denied ever having heard of the business, and the investigator had accepted that statement without question, despite the fact that the business was at the same address and had the same phone number as Duy’s former law office.
“I’m sorry this didn’t work out like we hoped.” Paul said.
“At least we tried,” I said. “And something else has come up now that makes me believe the insurance scam is the tip of the iceberg.”
I told him about the call I’d had from the tipster who told me that Kait had witnessed a drug transaction. I was tempted to add that three different psychics who knew nothing about the phone call had told us the exact same thing, but I didn’t want to risk my credibility, so I let the tipster’s statement stand on its own.
“I think we should take that phone tip seriously,” Paul said. “It came at exactly the time the new directory came out, which makes me think the informant probably wanted to call sooner but didn’t know how to reach you when your phone was unlisted. But the tip’s not of any use to us without the names of the people involved. There’s a lot to suggest that Kait’s boyfriend or his friends may be drug runners, but we don’t ha
ve the concrete evidence that would be necessary to get a conviction.”
“I have plenty of proof that they were crossing state lines to commit insurance fraud,” I said. “And I have Bao Tran’s check to prove that he financed the car wrecks. Neither the police nor the FBI will follow up on that. Is there any way we can force the authorities to do anything?”
“The insurance companies might be able to do that,” Paul said. “Which ones covered the ‘injured parties’ through the rental companies?”
“National General, State Farm, Progressive, and Farmers. And all the fake injuries were treated at Humana Hospital.”
“I know some people at several of those companies,” Paul said. “I’ll pass along what you’ve got and see how they react to it. But even if Bao Tran and the others are arrested and convicted of insurance fraud, you aren’t going to get them for murder unless you get more proof.”
25
SEVERAL DAYS LATER NANCY Czetli’s secretarial assistant called to say that Nancy had looked through our new batch of photographs and reacted strongly to two of them. Our first reaction was to think she was hedging her bets, but when we examined the negatives we discovered that the pictures she had selected were two very different views of the same house, one taken from the front and the other from the side as we drove past it on our way down the mountain. I set up another phone appointment with Nancy:
NANCY: After looking at the photos I think Kait had been in the area of this house and possibly in it that evening and other times and was aware that drug activities were going on there. This was a part of the activity she was going to expose.
An odd thing about it is, when the exchange is taking place, she’s not in the house, she’s outside. The people involved in the transaction aren’t the people who own the house. I don’t know whether the man is a friend and can come over or is renting or what, but it isn’t his house. And I do not believe the person who owns that house knew anything about these activities. This home was being used as an exchange point, but as near as I can tell, the owner was out of town at the time.
Some of the occupants at the time of this exchange were two small, slightly built Oriental men, and a man who’s Caucasian. He’s middle-aged, heavyset, and has shiny black hair.
LOIS: Do you feel these Orientals were the suppliers of the drugs?
NANCY: Both the Oriental men were involved in importing them. I get the feeling that Albuquerque is the hub of a multiveined network and drugs are being imported from at least two states.
LOIS: What do you feel about that house now?
NANCY: It seems to be a clean house now. They don’t use it as a drug pickup point anymore.
LOIS: How did they get in there?
NANCY: With a key. The white guy had a key. He must know the person who owns the house, because he had a key and authorization to be there.
LOIS: Do you feel this was the man who put out the hit order?
NANCY: No, definitely not. This man was not in any way responsible for Kait’s murder, nor does he necessarily realize that the murder was connected with what he did. Knowing that she was killed and knowing who she was involved with, it did cross his mind back there in the beginning that something might be connected, but he’s now accepted the public solution of what happened. He did not order her killing, I want to be very clear on that.
LOIS: Right after Kait was pronounced brain dead, a call was made from her apartment to somebody in Santa Ana. Was this connected with the drug trafficking?
NANCY: I think that man is the one who put a contract out on Kait. And when the contract was completed, the guy was notified, and there was another exchange of money. There had been a prepayment, and then another payment was made. But I don’t feel the second payment ever got to the killers. That money was stolen in transit.
LOIS: What was the connection between these Vietnamese and the killers themselves? We need to establish a link.
NANCY: My feeling is the only link is drugs. Hispanic guys act as transporters from a different section of the network. It’s a Latin part of the transport system. And when you’re in this kind of a network, you don’t say no to the boss, or you turn up dead. So it’s not like they had a whole lot of choice. They were told what to do and they did it. But they were paid for it and blew the cash very quickly.
LOIS: What about Juve Escobedo, who supposedly drove the hit car? Do you have any idea where he is?
NANCY: I sense that he’s in northern Mexico right now. He’s been coming back and forth, though. He’s remained pretty free, because he knows nobody’s really looking seriously. He should be back in town probably late next week.
LOIS: Do you sense a police cover-up? Was somebody paid off?
NANCY: Actually, no, I don’t feel that any money changed hands. Something occurred early on—I don’t know what it was—that kept the investigation from going in the right direction, but once the police identified the Hispanics as the killers, most of the Homicide Department became convinced it was random. Cops can be very blind when they think they’ve figured something out. It’s not exactly a cover-up, although it certainly can look like one. It’s like they’ve solved this case, so why are you still fussing?
I think there is one of the detectives who really does agree with you. He doesn’t dare say so, but he agrees with you. There were just too many things about that boyfriend that didn’t wash. He has continued to pursue this, but he doesn’t want anyone knowing he’s doing this. But you’ve got one investigator who still isn’t satisfied.
LOIS: Are you sure it’s a man? [I was hoping it was Sergeant Lowe.]
NANCY: Oh, yes, definitely, and he’s a very good investigator. He’s a psychical person, although he would never use that word. He knew the boyfriend was lying over and over again, and he found that highly suspicious. So this investigator keeps thinking, if he didn’t have something to do with this, why would he have lied? This guy is good at reading character. He knew what he was looking at.
LOIS: Do you think he’s going to be successful?
NANCY: I think the tragedy of it is that the puzzle will not be broken until after another murder has occurred. This detective has checked on the boyfriend and I feel that he has notified some of his friends in Vice that he thinks he may be involved in drug dealing. The day may very well come when they set him up.
I also think one of the anonymous phone calls that the police department got telling them where to start looking for these hitmen was from one of the people who hired them. They hired away from their own, because they were going to set these men up. That way they were able to stop the investigation. If the investigation had gone on, it would have uncovered the rest of the stuff involving the Vietnamese. What’s horrifying to us who live regular, conventional lives is how easy it is to get a contract hit. It’s not even very expensive. LOIS: I gather Juve, the driver, is not going to turn up?
NANCY: Oh, they’re going to get him eventually, but I don’t believe he will be found before this summer at the earliest. Still, as I said, he’ll be in the area toward the end of next week. If they check his regular haunts, they might catch him.
LOIS: Do you think Kait had a sense of what was going to happen to her?
NANCY: From what I get from Kait, she had nightmares about it—about being chased by a car and about hearing the shots and knowing immediately she was not going to get away. That’s why she really floored it when she saw the car behind her, because she remembered the dream and she tried very hard to get away.
LOIS: Do you feel Kait still has an existence as Kait, not just as an energy?
NANCY: She exists as more than Kait was. Because when you cross that dividing line between this dimension and the dimension in which souls rest between lifetimes, you have more knowledge and more understanding of the evolving process of the soul than we can possibly have.
LOIS: Do you think we ever again get back together with the people we love?
NANCY: Definitely. When you cross over you are met, and you’re
met inevitably by someone you will recognize and be comfortable with, because that’s the purpose of meeting you. They don’t want you to be afraid.
LOIS: I wonder who met Kait.
NANCY: I have the feeling there was a gentleman there—I would say by his age he had probably been a grandfather—who really helped her tremendously, because she still was very frightened. She didn’t realize she was dead and kept trying to run.
He was with two women. Kait knew one of them, and the other she hadn’t met personally, but she knew instinctively who she was. She wasn’t alone for any length of time. They were there right from the beginning.
LOIS: My father died when Kait was fifteen, and Don’s mother when she was eleven. My own mother died three years before Kait was born.
On the morning of the day Kait was shot, she came over to our house and wanted to look through the old family albums. That surprised me because she’d never been interested before. I got them out and sat down with her, and she kept picking out pictures of my mother and saying, “Why, Mother, she looked just like you!” Do you think, subconsciously, she was trying to establish a bond with her?
NANCY: She recognized them all somehow. She knew what their place was relative to hers. She did not understand the significance of it at first—why they were there, why she was there, what exactly had happened—but, at least, they were able to reach her mentally and get her calmed down.
LOIS: Do you get any feeling about how she is now?
NANCY: I get the feeling that she is very excited about what is now possible for her. She is very disappointed in herself and in how she lived her life. She feels that she let you down and let herself down. But she will grow past that. She’s a very curious person. She has a tremendous sense of curiosity, and she is very interested in what she can learn now. She likes to learn.