A Deadly Game (21 page)

"I told Scott I felt he may have more time to contact the businesses who wrote the checks and have those checks stopped and a new check issued rather than have me stop working on the investigation of his missing wife to write court orders," Grogan wrote. Seeming to back off a bit, Scott said, "Sure, you're right. You should be working on the case.'"

It was Scott's move. If Grogan wasn't going to give him the checks, then he wasn't going to give the detective his debit card. Instead, he pulled out a piece of paper that read "Chevron Parthian, Livermore, 932498575. $13.08." He had downloaded the receipt from the Internet rather than let the detectives have his card to collect the information. Changing the subject back to his wife, Scott asked if Grogan believed that Laci was kidnapped for the baby. "Do you think when she has the baby, I'll get half my family back?" Scott asked flatly.

Just reading that question sends chills up my spine.

"I told Scott that we had investigated any leads with similar themes; however, I found the probability that Laci was kidnapped for the baby to be unlikely," Grogan logged in his daily report. "I also explained to him that we had asked all local law enforcement agencies to notify Modesto Police Department regarding any calls from hospitals about infants who are accompanied by females that do not medically appear likely to be the child's mother."

Scott next asked the detective if he thought that Laci had died.

"I told Scott that with each passing day, the likelihood that Laci would be returned unharmed diminished," Grogan wrote. Then, at last, "Scott appeared to have tears well in his eyes," the detective noted. But "Scott did not cry, and I did not hear him sniffing."

At 5:30 that afternoon, there was an apparent break in the case. Detectives George Stough and Sebron Banks went into a briefing about the burglary that occurred at 516 Covena Avenue. An anonymous tipster had informed Detective Stough that items stolen from the Medina home-and one of the men who allegedly pulled off the burglary-were at a house on Tenaya Avenue. The caller also stated that additional property taken during the heist was at a second residence on the same block.

At 6:00 P.M., police knocked on the door of 1406 Tenaya Avenue. A woman answered, and told police she lived at the residence. Inside, officers saw several small children.

Officer Hicks told the woman that he was following up on a burglary, and asked if he could speak with her further. She invited him in. The officers explained that they had received information that led them to believe that items stolen from a nearby house were in her residence. The woman gave police permission to search the premises, and signed a search warrant waiver.

While the search was under way, forty-two-year-old Donald Pearce pulled into the driveway. A background check of the home's residents prior to arriving on the scene revealed that Pearce had an outstanding traffic warrant from neighboring San Bernadino County. Officers standing in the driveway placed him under arrest.

Pearce told the investigators that he had resided with his mother in her home on Tenaya Avenue for the past sixteen years. He was unemployed, and worked on cars in his mother's driveway for income. He explained that he was the primary caregiver of his two young children; they lived in the main house with his mother, while he resided in a trailer in the back.

Another man, Steven Wayne Todd, also lived in a shed in his mother's backyard. When asked about the burglary on Covena Avenue, Pearce revealed these unreported details:

On the morning of December 26, 2002, Steven Todd came into his trailer between the hours of six-thirty and seven o'clock. He told Pearce that he had been inside the home all night, and that there was now a safe sitting on the home's front porch. Todd told him that he needed a vehicle to transport the heavy safe back to his shed. According to Pearce, the two men climbed into his four-door white truck, drove to 516 Covena, then used a dolly to transport the "very large, cream-colored safe" to their vehicle.

Pearce described how Todd had shoved the safe into the front seat and closed the passenger door, then climbed in the rear passenger side, leaving the dolly on the grass near the curb. The two drove back to their place on Tenaya, and then carried the safe, which Pearce said weighed about 250 pounds, to Todd's shed. The safe was so heavy that at one point they dropped it, and wound up rolling it to the front door of Todd's room. Todd retrieved a sledgehammer and other prying tools, and pounded on the safe's dial until it caved in and the door popped open. Inside there were two blue money bags, a box of jewelry, and a Tech 9 handgun, accompanied by a "very large magazine and bullets." Pearce told Todd he would get rid of the gun. A second gun was also among the stolen goods.

The two men sifted through the jewelry, then looked inside the blue money bags. They were empty, Pearce claimed. Susan Medina had told police they contained $50,000 in cash, but Pearce said that the jewelry and the handgun were the only items of value inside the safe. The pieces included a woman's gold and emerald ring, a jade and gold ring, a woman's diamond wedding set, ruby earrings, and miscellaneous rings and necklaces containing precious gems.

When police located Todd, he admitted to committing the burglary-he said he was on a bicycle at the time-but told police he had nothing to do with "the woman." When officers asked him to clarify, he said he was referring to "the missing woman with the baby."

Todd was no stranger to the arresting officers; he had been booked on similar charges in the past. He claimed that he had sold most of the jewelry and one of the handguns to a relative of a friend, and gave the rest of the pieces away to female friends. As for the tools stolen from the shed, he sold them at a swap meet that past Saturday. During a later interview with cops, Pearce admitted to selling the second gun for two hundred dollars.

Both men were booked into the Stanislaus County Jail. The detectives never believed that Todd and Pearce had any involvement with Laci's disappearance. After the two men submitted to polygraphs later in the day, the police issued a press release stating that the burglary and Laci's disappearance were in no way connected. Todd later pleaded guilty to one burglary charge and received an eight-year sentence; Pearce pleaded no contest to a lesser charge and got 180 days.

The police were still receiving reports from the Red Lion Hotel. Sergeant Ed Steele, the police liaison assigned to Laci Peterson's family, recalled that on the night of December 30, 2002, around 7:30 or 8:00 P.M., Scott Peterson had returned to the hotel, sat down in a chair, and began sobbing. Several of Laci's friends noticed his outburst and jumped up to comfort him. Scott's "crying jag" lasted for about thirty minutes. He then got up and helped himself to food donated by the local restaurants for the search teams.

"Sergeant Steele advised that Scott had no apparent loss of appetite and based on his breakdown earlier, he found it odd that he was able to eat within such a short time," Grogan recorded.

Grogan's next move was to leave Scott a voicemail message, telling him that the Land Rover was ready to be picked up. He didn't say that he intended to ask Scott for DNA samples, or that he would present evidence of his affair with Amber Frey.

"All of the information that I had provided Scott Peterson was true," Grogan noted in his report. "However, I did plan to return the vehicle with a tracking device installed in it, and I also planned to serve a search warrant completed by Detective Al Brocchini for blood, cheek cell samples, hair sample, and full body photographs."

Scott called Grogan back and said he would swing by headquarters in about half an hour to pick up the Land Rover. "Hey, um, I heard about the robbery-did we-get any leads out of those guys?" Scott asked.

"Well, we got all the burglars in custody and, ah, we're working on clearing those guys out now, but they just appear to be just a bunch of burglars," Grogan stated.

"Yeah?"

"I mean there's nothing . . . they're with us now and we're working on that angle of it, but it's not like, you know, any of them have been arrested for some heinous thing in the past or something."

"Yeah, I just hope they saw something." Scott told the detective.

A little while later, Scott arrived at the Detective Division with his father. Grogan met the men in the lobby and gave Scott the keys to his wife's SUV. He then asked if he could show him something. Scott consented. He and Lee started walking toward the interview room in the Investigative Services Building. Grogan motioned for Lee Peterson to remain behind, advising that he wanted to meet with Scott alone.

"You're free to leave, and you don't have to talk to me if you don't want to," Grogan advised Scott as they entered the small, well-lit room. Most of what happened next has never been reported in the press.

Scott sat down. He watched as the detective produced a photocopy of a fax the police had received-it was the photo of Scott and Amber posing at the Christmas formal that Amber's mother had sent over the night before.

Grogan had other, better photographs of Scott and Amber in his possession, but decided not to produce them. Instead, he simply said that police had received "a copy of one faxed photograph" sent in anonymously. Looking directly at Scott, he slid the grainy black-and-white fax across the table. "Can you explain this?"

"Is that supposed to be me?" Scott asked impassively. "It looks like you."

Scott insisted that the man in the picture was not him, nor did he recognize the woman. Was this another stalling tactic? Why else would he deny this, when police would surely be able to confirm it? "Are you certain you have never seen her before?" Grogan asked. Scott said she resembled a girl he once knew in college.

Changing the subject, Grogan told Scott about the burglary investigation. Both men had taken polygraph exams and passed, he said. The police were certain that the suspects in custody had nothing to do with his wife's disappearance. "Good," Scott said.

The detective then asked about some of the items that police had taken from his house and business during the searches. When, Grogan wanted to know, did Scott make the anchor for his boat?

"Again, Scott told me it was Thursday, Friday, or Saturday, prior to Laci's disappearance," Grogan recorded. "I asked Scott where he purchased the bag of cement and he told me he bought it at Home Depot, and once he had made the anchor, he threw the bag away. I asked how large a bag he made and he held his hands apart a distance of approximately two feet, indicating the approximate size of a 90-pound bag of cement."

"I asked Scott why he chose to make an anchor out of cement rather than buy an anchor from a store. He told me a bag of cement cost approximately $3 in a store and an anchor would cost $30 or more to purchase. Scott looked at several boats on December 9 before buying the nicest, most expensive one. His other activities, like wining and dining Amber Frey, did not support the notion that he would make some puny concrete weight to take to the Bay rather than spending just thirty bucks on a good, substantial anchor.

"I told Scott I had never seen a cement anchor previously and asked where he had gotten the idea. Scott told me he had seen them in rental boats in the San Diego area in the past and believed they would be easy to make. Scott told me the standard anchor is called a 'Danforth' but a mushroom anchor was the type on the boat when he first viewed it. Scott said the owner of the boat did not want to sell the anchor, so Scott decided to make his own.

"I asked Scott if he looked at any other boats. Scott said he had looked at two other boats on the Modesto Bee online. Scott again confirmed that Laci was the only person who was aware that he planned to purchase a boat. She did not go with him to look at the boats as she had no real interest in them," Grogan later wrote.

"I explained to Scott that in reviewing my report and Detective Brocchini's report, I saw a difference in his statement. I asked Scott to confirm when he first saw McKenzie on 12/24/2002 after returning home from fishing. Scott confirmed that he first saw McKenzie when he arrived home, prior to entering the house.

"I asked Scott why he had put the umbrellas in the back of his truck. Scott said he had wrapped them in a tarp to take them to the shop but had forgotten to take them out on two occasions. I asked Scott where their current location was and he told me he had taken them out of his vehicle and put them in a shed behind his house."

Eventually, however, Scott began to bristle. When Grogan started asking Scott about the tarp that he had moved from his truck to the shed, he wrote, "Scott said, 'I don't know if it's appropriate I'm talking to you without my attorney, Mr. McAllister.' I told Scott that was fine, but I wanted to explain one thing to him."

Grogan recorded what he told Scott next. "I was aware he was a young man with a job requiring his travel and he was a 'good looking guy' that would have no difficulty meeting women. I told Scott if there had been infidelities in his marriage, it would not necessarily mean he had done anything wrong to Laci and he should tell me if he had been seeing other girls. Scott said the last time he dated anyone aside from Laci was prior to his marriage to her."

Even as Grogan was having this conversation, police were learning that Amber was not the only woman claiming an intimate relationship with Scott while he was married to Laci. At that moment Scott's ex-girlfriend Janet Use was on the phone with one of Grogan's assistants, describing her 1998 affair with Scott while the two attended Cal Poly. Use, the woman who had walked in on Scott and Laci in bed together, had finally called police to share that story. Although what she and Brocchini discussed was not admitted at trial, it helped to fill in the detectives' portrait of Scott Peterson.