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“I FEEL LIKE THE second shoe has dropped now,” I said. “Both Betty and Nancy predicted another murder.”
“And the fact that this information came from a Vietnamese informant is in keeping with Betty’s prediction that the person with the most guilt would be ‘sacrificed by the community,’ ” Kerry said. “The Hickses didn’t follow up on that information, because by then they were no longer working for Miguel’s attorneys. While they were on the case, though, they turned up a lot.
“Tanya thinks Kait was killed because of the car wrecks. The insurance scam brought in fifty million dollars per year. Tanya says Bao Tran is what’s called a ‘capper’ in the Asian mafia, which means he’s up at the top and sets everything up. She says it’s a very incestuous group, and she thinks the gang members were ordered to take out any round-eyes who knew about the scam. She thinks Dung may have tried to get around that by taking Kait to California with him, possibly hoping to get her involved so she wouldn’t be a threat to them.
‘Tanya said the same thing that Dung’s friend Ray said about Dung’s friends out there being suppliers of cocaine. She says Los Angeles is one of the major pathways for getting cocaine into the country. The method for getting it in is called ‘the Trampoline.’ The coke gets bounced from Colombia to Mexico and is transported across the border by Mexican nationals.”
“Juve Escobedo is a Mexican national!” I exclaimed. “When Betty said one of the suspects had relatives in the L.A. area, we jumped to the conclusion it was Miguel, but maybe Juve’s the one who has relatives there. If Kait ran into either one of those guys when she and Dung were in California it would explain the reading that said, ‘There will have been some kind of other encounter at another time,’ and ‘They will seem to have some way to fear that something is known about them by her and thus now by others.’ ”
“Tanya says she has a video of Dung selling drugs,” Kerry said. “He’s all dressed up like an Asian godfather, flanked by a couple of strong-arm henchmen to beat up the customers who don’t pay. She says he’s utterly vicious, but an excellent actor. Her husband is a Vietnam veteran, and when he did the interrogation, Dung had no problem with the language, because he knew Dennis Hicks could switch over to Vietnamese. But when they held the interrogation in the DA’s office, Dung suddenly was hardly able to speak English. Susan Riedel felt so sorry for him that she wouldn’t let anyone pressure him and told him he didn’t have to answer ‘uncomfortable’ questions.
“The Hickses don’t understand what’s going on with APD. Tanya said she tailed Dung one night when he went out to sell drugs and watched him make a sale standing under a streetlight. A police car was parked a couple of yards away from him, and the cop just sat there and watched and never did anything.
“Dung told APD that on the night Kait was shot, he and his friends were at the Firehouse restaurant. Tanya says that’s not true. The Firehouse is a tiny place that’s not frequented much by Vietnamese, and the lady bartender told her that if those guys had been in there that night she was sure she would have noticed them.
“Tanya said that she and Miguel’s attorney, Joe Riggs, sat down with the prosecutors and went over all the evidence they had against Dung. That’s when the prosecutors decided to drop the charges against the Hispanics. Riggs then offered to hand everything over to APD so they could use it to start a new investigation. Nobody’s ever bothered to come and get the tapes and things, and she considers that a sign that the investigation’s over.
“Oh, and one other tidbit that will make you want to vomit—Miguel is planning to sue APD for false arrest.”
When I repeated that news to Don, he actually started laughing.
“He’d better consult Betty Muench before he tries that,” he said. “If Juve is ‘rearrested’ and comes forth with all manner of confessions,’ Miguel is going to wish he’d left well enough alone.”
“How can Juve be rearrested when the charges have been withdrawn?”
“They can get him for breaking probation and running out on a bench warrant and withdraw those charges if he agrees to say what they want him to. They must have had some reason for keeping him on hold, otherwise they’d have picked him up a year ago.”
“You think the police would actually cut a deal with him?”
“Don’t tell me there’s still a part of the file you haven’t read!”
He dug out the transcript of a tape of Detective A. V. Romero interrogating Robert Garcia, the “witness-who-wasn’t-there.”
“We might be able to work out a deal with Juve,” Romero told the teenager in an effort to get him to testify against Miguel. “Chances are we might be able to cut him some slack, cut him loose and not charge him at all.”
“That does sound like their ace-in-the-hole,” I conceded.
“Their other plan was to manipulate us,” Don said. “It’s obvious Bob Schwartz had no intention of calling us in to brainstorm, and Susan Riedel hasn’t given us one single progress report. They made those promises to keep us from talking to the press and leaking the fact that the ‘new’ information the police profess to be so eager to follow up on is the same information we gave them the day after Kait died.
“I think it’s time we got together with the Hickses.”
We arranged to meet the detectives at a restaurant for lunch, but the four of us got so busy talking that we never even opened our menus. It was evident they were emotionally invested in Kait’s case and were frustrated and furious that APD didn’t want to use their evidence.
“We just don’t get it,” Tanya said. “There were no arrests for six months after the shooting, during which time those Vietnamese men were the only suspects, yet Steve Gallegos admitted in the DA’s office that he never investigated one single thing in California.”
“But Sergeant Lowe told me he checked out everything in my letter!” I exclaimed.
“He didn’t check anything that had to do with Vietnamese activities.”
“Not even the phone numbers called from Kait’s apartment?”
“Not those—not anything. We’ve got his statement on tape.”
“Then what was APD doing all that time?” Don demanded.
“Who knows?” Tanya said. “There were no formal interviews conducted during that time period, and after he typed his report, Gallegos destroyed all his notes. When Joe Riggs asked him about the interview in which Dung’s friend, Adrian, described how Kait was being followed by a beige VW, he said he couldn’t remember anything about it. He didn’t tape the interview; the report was omitted from the file; Adrian disappeared right after he was interrogated; and with the notes destroyed, there’s no way to document the content of Adrian’s statement.”
“Did he ever get the Vietnamese letters translated?”
“He said his superiors wouldn’t let him, because there was a budget crunch.”
“A budget crunch!” Don exploded. “It wouldn’t have cost them a penny! We’ve been trying for two full years to get those letters back so we could get them translated at our own expense! And what about the man on the force who speaks Vietnamese? The only reason Lois gave those letters to the police was because she was told there was a man on the force who would translate them!”
“That’s bull,” Dennis said. “There’s nobody on the force who knows enough Vietnamese to translate those letters. Changing the subject—have you ever seen the accident report for the wreck when Kait was driving?”
“No,” Don said in surprise. “You mean there was such a report? Gallegos told us there was, but he never produced it, so we chalked it up as another of his inaccuracies.”
“From what we’ve been told, the report does exist,” Dennis said. “It’s not in the file, though, and we haven’t been able to find a record of the accident.”
“If Kait wrecked a car, it wasn’t in March,” I said. “If she did it during spring break when Dung staged his wreck, Tran’s check would have been for three thousand, not fifteen hundred. It’s possible
Dung took her out there again in May. If they did stage another accident, it was probably then.”
“There’s something else we’re curious about,” Tanya said. “It’s why Dung came back to Albuquerque after recovering from his stab wound. Why didn’t he run to a safe house?”
“What’s a safe house?” I asked.
“It’s a hideout for Vietnamese fugitives. The mafia has them scattered all over the country. When gang members get in trouble, they hole up in the safe houses until they can change their identities and get new Social Security numbers. Dung could have done that easily, yet he returned to Albuquerque and remained in close touch with the police. According to Gallegos, he phoned several times to inquire about the status of the investigation.
“Another question—why did Dung spill his guts about the insurance scam? He was read his rights and didn’t have to admit to anything, but he spouted names and addresses like they were going out of style. He even handed over Bao Tran’s new business card, showing that he’s now vice-president of Japan Life Sleeping Systems.”
“Is Dung still in town?” Don asked.
“We have no idea. The police let him walk out the door, and now nobody can find him. That’s another odd thing—if Dung was planning to skip town, why did he confess to the car wrecks before he left? Why didn’t he run before he got called in for questioning?”
In the car on the way home I said to Don, “I have a theory about why Dung came back to Albuquerque. Remember Carla Wallenda’s story about her grandparents? When they felt the wolves closing in, they’d shoot a horse and leave it behind to distract them while the circus got away.”
“You think Dung was stationed here to keep tabs on the investigation and confessed to the wrecks to divert attention from the drug running?”
“If so, it worked!” I said. “With the Hickses and even with Mike! They all believe Kait was killed so she wouldn’t expose the insurance scam. Everybody has been so mesmerized by the car wrecks that nobody’s bothered to look very hard at the possible drug running.”
“How do you feel about Gallegos’s statement that his superiors are the ones who didn’t want the Vietnamese letters translated?”
“I’m willing to buy that,” I said. “He’s a pawn in the bureaucracy. We don’t know what sort of pressure was being applied to him.” I remembered the day that I’d taken Gallegos the items from Kait’s desk and he had said, “Would you believe there are people in this department who still insist your daughter’s shooting was ‘random’?” His incredulous tone had proclaimed that idea preposterous. Something had happened after that to turn him around, and because the man was so likable on a personal level, I was eager to believe that throughout the botched investigation he had been acting on the orders of less ethical “superiors,” who, perhaps, may not have wanted the activities of Dung and his friends investigated.
When we got home I phoned Mike to see if he had heard anything about An Le’s arrest. He told me he’d heard the rumor and had been trying to follow up on it but was having no luck because An had so many aliases.
“I’m sure the FBI could find him,” Don said when I told him that. “I’d give a lot to know why they’ve chosen to stay out of this.”
An idea suddenly occurred to me.
“I bet Gary could find out for us!”
“Who?”
“Gary Miller, who took me to my first school prom. Don’t you remember? You met him at my high-school reunion.”
“The tall, thin guy with the red hair?”
“Yes, that’s the one. It blew me away when he told me he was an FBI agent. I’d always thought he’d be something ethereal like a poet.”
“Do you know where he lives?”
“No, but somebody on the alumni committee will.”
I made a few calls, got Gary’s address, and wrote him a letter describing our situation and asking if he could find out why the FBI had been unwilling to get involved in the investigation.
Gary responded with a phone call.
“I checked with the FBI office in Albuquerque,” he told me. “They’ve been very aware of the case and wanted to work on it. They told APD they would be willing to help in any way, that it looked like a major case that would involve a lot of questioning and they wanted to offer their manpower and the use of their laboratory. The Homicide Department told them to butt out. The FBI can’t step into a case on their own, Lois. Once we present our credentials, it’s up to the locals.”
“Why would the police refuse to accept their help?”
“There’s a lot of political jealousy between locals and feds,” Gary said. “Locals don’t like the feds to help out with their cases for fear the Bureau will solve them and reap all the glory. They’ve even been known to hide or destroy evidence rather than let the FBI solve a case for them. If the feds get the credit, there aren’t any stats for the locals.”
“ ‘Stats’?”
“Statistics on how many crimes they’ve solved. Every police officer has to show results. It’s like working in a factory and having to account for how many doghouses you make each month. These guys are being pressured by their supervisors to rack up stats or get the hell out of the department. That’s why they don’t like to work on complicated cases. No police department in the country has enough money, and if they can’t solve a case right away, they’re pressured to close it, so they don’t have to use their resources for a prolonged investigation.”
“Do you think that’s why APD kept insisting this was ‘random’—they wanted to get a ‘stat’ with a minimum of effort?”
“That may or may not be true in this particular case,” Gary said. “But there definitely are occasions when marks are set up for arrest, and even if the feds know it, there’s nothing we can do about it except make anonymous calls to the suspects’ defense attorneys.
“At this juncture, though, with the locals’ case down the drain, maybe you and your husband can get something going on your own. Do you have any proof that there was interstate crime involved?”
“Yes, and we’ve already sent it to the FBI in Orange County,” I said. “They never even acknowledged that they received it.”
“You should have sent it to the L.A. office,” Gary told me. “Resident agencies get to be their own little kingdoms, and sometimes the guys in charge of them are less than adequate. Contact the special agent in charge of the FBI office in Los Angeles and tell him what you’ve told me. Then set up an appointment with the SAC at your local FBI office and tell him the same thing.
“If you deal with the SAC in L.A., I guarantee that you’ll get a response of some kind. They can’t open an investigation unless it seems to be a real federal case, but the SAC is in a position to make that determination. If you can present him with hard evidence that these people are going across state lines to conduct insurance fraud or to carry narcotics, the case will come under the jurisdiction of the Bureau. If the SAC decides there’s interstate crime involved, the FBI can step in without permission from APD. But you have to understand, their primary objective will not be to investigate your daughter’s murder, because that’s not a federal crime. They’ll be investigating interstate drug trafficking and insurance fraud, and if information about Kait’s murder happens to surface, that will be frosting on the cake.”
We didn’t know how much evidence the SAC would require, so we thought that we’d better accumulate as much as we could. We had formed a grudging respect for Miguel Garcia’s aggressive attorneys, and since Joe Riggs had selected the Hickses as his investigators, we decided we’d follow his lead and hire them ourselves. I suspected also that they were the people Mike had shared his information with at the point at which Betty said he “would seem to quit.” My reason for thinking this was that the defense attorneys had been quoted in both papers as saying the car wreck participants were paid $2,000, an inaccuracy that had appeared in my letter to Mike. We had learned later that the actual amount was $1,500, but the erroneous $2,000 figure kept being referred
to by the defense, who could only have gotten it from my letter. I trusted Mike’s judgment, and if he’d had enough confidence in the Hickses to have passed along information for them to follow up on, I had to believe they were decent, trustworthy people who would not intentionally endanger us.
Knowing that the detectives had an initial loyalty to Riggs, we didn’t feel right in asking them to get us the Garcias’ phone bills, so we restricted our requests for information to Vietnamese activity. We asked them to try to confirm An Le’s alleged arrest, to get information about Dung’s friends in California, and to continue to work on digging up the missing accident report. The fact that this particular report had mysteriously vanished, while the other accident reports had been left in the police file, suggested that it might contain information the police wanted hidden. Had Kait and Dung rented their car from R & J Car Leasing? Was the name of the second party in the wreck significant?
“It’s too bad we don’t have the name of that kid who contacted Riggs,” Tanya said in a casual aside to her husband at the end of our meeting.
“What kid?” Don asked.
“There was a boy who turned up at Riggs’s office and told his secretary he wanted to meet with him. He said he was a former boyfriend of Kait’s and they’d started dating again only weeks before the murder. The kid was crying and sounded flaky, and since Riggs already had what he needed to get Miguel off, he didn’t bother to set up an appointment. Chances are it wasn’t on the up and up anyway.”
“Did the boy say he knew Kait in high school?” I asked, struggling to keep my voice from reflecting my excitement. Could this be the person Kait had met at the Coronado shopping mall—the romantic relationship that continued without my knowledge?
“Riggs didn’t say,” Tanya said. “But he did mention one thing—the kid had a silver bracelet with his name and Kait’s on it.”
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