A Deadly Game (5 page)

Detective Brocchini started a tape recorder, then began to speak. "Pretty much, Scott, we'll just go over what we already talked about so I can make some notes."

Scott mumbled his agreement. "Tell me about the morning?"

Very matter-of-factly, Scott recited their activities. "Ah, okay. I don't know what time we got up," but he did say that Laci was up first and had cereal for breakfast. He noted that his pregnant wife got sick if she did not eat as soon as she got out of bed.

"I laid around in bed longer, I got up at, I don't know, eight o'clock or so." Brocchini noted that Scott made no mention of anybody making the bed. "I showered. We were watching her favorite show, Martha Stewart [Living]. Watched a little bit of that."

"You didn't watch the whole thing through?" Detective Brocchini interjected. "No."

"You remember what part you saw?"

"I don't know, some cooking deal, cookies of some sort. They were talking about what to do with meringue." This trivial fact would become a crucial reference point at trial, one that would prove embarrassing for the prosecution but even more damning for Scott. "I can't remember your house . . . the converted garage area, is that your TV room?" the detective asked. "Yeah."

"Did you eat any breakfast?" "I had a bowl of cereal." The events Scott described in that first interview struck me as

odd when I first reviewed the transcript of this conversation. Police photographs in the kitchen showed no cereal bowls or other breakfast dishes in the sink. There were bowls in the dishwater, but no one looked in the refrigerator to see if Laci had begun marinating French toast for her brunch the next day, as Scott would later claim. This item would have been evidence that she was alive in the morning hours on Christmas Eve. Of course, if Laci had cleaned the kitchen that morning, that would have been one more activity-along with mopping the floor and possibly making the bed-that would have delayed her walk with McKenzie.

"Okay," the detective prompted. "When did you realize you were gonna go fishing?"

"Ah, that was the morning decision, it either-"

"That's a morning decision?" Brocchini asked.

"... Go play golf at the club or go fishin' ..." Scott said.

"Okay."

"It seemed too cold to go play golf at the club." Scott chuckled. "So, ya know, decided might as well-"

"Uh-huh." For a passionate golfer, it is rarely too cold to play. However, Christmas Eve out on the bay in a fourteen-foot boat sounds awfully chilly.

"Laci told me what she was gonna do for the day," Scott volunteered.

"And what was that?"

"She was gonna finish cleaning up, like I said, she was mopping the kitchen floor, then take the dog for a walk and then she was going to the store to buy for Christmas morning breakfast tomorrow. That was gonna involve prepping the breakfast, and she was gonna make gingerbread cookies for tonight." Scott explained.

"What was she mopping?" Brocchini asked.

"The tile in the entryway area." When the detective pressed him to be precise, Scott specified that it was the back entryway area.

"Right where the mop was outside?" Brocchini asked, his dark eyes peering over his glasses to watch the young man's response.

"No, no, no." Scott said she was working in the area that led out to the back patio.

"There was a lotta places she planned to go," he continued. "She had me put the bucket by the front door."

"So she asked you to put the mop bucket by the front door?" Brocchini repeated.

"Yeah, she's, you know, eight months pregnant, can't pick it up for anything, so I filled it up for her, put it in, ah, I think that's the central place." Scott didn't seem aware of the mounting inconsistencies in his story. Laci wouldn't have been able to move the bucket, yet he left it some distance from where she was cleaning? For that matter, the mops would have been very difficult for her to use in her condition, as they required someone to bend over and wring out excess water by hand before moving around the house.

"Did you move the bucket back when you came home? How did it get outside?" "Yeah, yeah." "So you put it out there?"

Scott mumbled his agreement. "The dog and the cat ran in. Yeah, she wasn't about to lift anything heavy."

Brocchini shifted to another subject. "When you left, do you remember what she was wearing?" Scott described black pants and a white long-sleeved T-shirt without any printing on it. She had not been wearing a jacket or shoes at the time. "No shoes?" Detective Brocchini asked.

"Uh-huh." Later, Scott said that she usually wore white tennis shoes on her walks with the dog. As for her jacket, he commented, "She usually steals my stuff." "She uses your stuff?"

"Yeah, because you know. . . . Instead of maternity stuff, so I don't really know."

"You don't know?" Brocchini pressed.

"She could have had hers or mine or nothing, I don't know," Scott continued. Brocchini never asked if these items were missing; he later learned that Scott hadn't bothered to check.

Detective Brocchini touched upon several more topics before turning to Scott's fishing trip. "Okay, then you hooked your boat up?"

Scott muttered in the affirmative.

"About what time did you leave Modesto?"

"Ah, gosh, I don't know. Extrapolate what time I got the-you know, noon, is that right?"

"Yeah ... no, one."

"Which one is it, then?" Scott demanded, referring to the marina receipt he had provided earlier.

"Shit, I don't know," Detective Brocchini admitted. "Tuesday, time twelve fifty-four on December twenty-fourth. Okay, so you got there at one o'clock."

"I got there at one?" Scott repeated. "Ah, that should take at least an hour and a half."

"Yeah, okay, it would be eleven-thirty or about," Brocchini calculated.

"Probably longer than that 'cause you can't go over fifty-five with that trailer," Scott explained.

"Did you drive straight there?"

"I did."

"You stop for lunch?" Detective Brocchini asked.

"No."

"Did you buy bait?"

"Nope, I'm not a bait fisherman," Scott declared.

"You didn't buy no lunch, didn't eat nothing?" the investigator persisted.

"Nothin'," Scott insisted. "I was damn hungry with that pizza when I got home."

Having established that Scott had arrived at the marina at about five minutes to one, Brocchini asked how long he had stayed on the water.

Scott could only estimate. "About an hour and a half."

Did he take a chart of the area with him? Scott said no.

"What, you just winged it?" Brocchini asked.

Scott nodded.

"Did you go very far?"

"No-I mean, probably a couple miles. I went north, found a, like, a little island kinda deal there."

"Uh-huh," the detective nodded.

"An island that had a bunch of trash on it. I remember a big sign that said NO LANDING. Looked like some broken piers around it. I just assumed it would be a decent, you know, shallow area."

"Did you troll?"

"Little bit. I mean a lot of, lot of the reason I went was just to get that boat in the water to see, you know." Scott had told the police earlier that he was fishing for sturgeon, but they would soon learn that his experience with sturgeon fishing was limited at best. If that was truly what he'd been doing, he'd chosen the wrong season and the wrong equipment. Furthermore, it was actually illegal to troll for that fish.

Scott's cell phone rang. It was Laci's younger half sister, Amy, calling to say that she and several other family members were back at his house.

"Amy?" Brocchini inquired.

"Yeah," Scott replied without elaboration.

"Is it Laci's sister?"

"Uh-huh. Different mothers, same father," he said dryly.

Brocchini was struck that Scott did not ask his sister-in-law a single question about the search for his wife. Reading the transcript, so was I. If my family member was missing, the first words out of my mouth on any new phone call would have been, "Did you find her?" or "Have you heard anything?" Yet Scott didn't ask Amy a thing. He must have known the answers.

"Okay, so you fish ninety minutes, then what? You go back to the marina?" the detective continued.

"Uh-huh."

"You see anybody, you talk to anybody out there?"

"Talked to a couple guys fishing. They asked me, 'Did you catch anything?' They didn't either. Ah, the guys working, fixing ah, maintenance guys, got a good laugh from me trying to back down the trailer," he explained, grinning. These individuals, if real, never emerged to testify at trial.

"Okay, then what? You drive, how did you get there?"

Scott described his route to the Berkeley Marina along Highway 580 to 50 North.

"You come home the same way?"

"Yeah," Scott replied.

"You have to stop for gas?"

"Stop for gas in Livermore or Pleasanton ... I think it was a Chevron station. There are buses around."

"How'd you pay?"

Scott told the officer he used a credit card, but he had no receipt.

"Debit or credit card?"

"I don't know which way they count it, debit or credit, when you stick it in there," Scott answered.

"Okay. When you got in the car, who did you call?"

"I called Laci, ah, just as I was leaving the marina."

"Home phone?" Brocchini asked.

Scott said he had called the home number and Laci's mobile phone, leaving messages on both. He gave Brocchini her cell number and password, but said he didn't know if the calls were time stamped. "Try it out," Scott said.

Brocchini listened to the messages, noting that the times were exactly as Scott said. He made no mention of his contemporaneous conversations with his father or his friend, Greg Reed. Both men enjoyed fishing, but Scott said nothing to them about his new boat or his trip to the bay.

After gassing up, Scott drove straight to the warehouse to drop off the boat and then went home.

Brocchini cleared his throat before asking the next question. "When you left, ah, what where you wearing?"

"Blue jeans and a blue T-shirt."

"And what shoes?"

"Ah, Timberland."

"Which jacket?"

Scott paused.

"Did you leave your jacket in the truck?" the detective interrupted.

"When I left the house, I didn't have a jacket on. But I had a, when I was in the warehouse, I had that green pullover on that was in my truck. When it started raining, I had a camo jacket on in the boat and, ah, tan hat."

"Okay, so then you went back to the shop, you unhooked the boat?"

"Uh-huh."

"Did you do anything else?"

"No. I... I guess I saw that fax. And I was late getting home so I went straight home," Scott responded.

"Did you try to call anymore?" Brocchini pressed.

"Just, ah, once from the marina, both phones, and then later on, I left a second message on her mobile."

"There was only one from you."

"Well, I left two at home, and I thought I left two on the mobile. Maybe I didn't leave the second one on the mobile," Scott conceded. "One was when I left Berkeley and the other one was, ah, when I was driving in Livermore. The traffic was pretty bad and I knew I wouldn't be home by four, so I gave her a call."

When he got home, Scott backed his car into the driveway next to Laci's SUV, then entered the house through the backyard. When he found McKenzie, dragging his leash, Scott removed the leash and placed it on the patio table. Entering the house through the French doors, he noticed that they were unlocked. He related his movements for Brocchini-dumping the mop water, then washing his clothes.

"Were you calling for Laci?" Brocchini wanted to know.

"Oh, yeah, of course," Scott assured him.

"But she wasn't home?"

"No, I assumed she was at her mom's."

"Okay, then what?"

"I grabbed some pizza, from the fridge." He then went to take a shower.

"Did you call her mom?"

"After I got out of the shower, and put clothes on, that's when I checked the messages."

"Were there any?"

"Yeah."

"Yours?"

"There were three, two from me and one from Ron, her stepfather, asking for whipped cream when we came over." With an air of annoyance, he added, "That's when I said, hey man, he's calling me for whipped cream?"

"Did you erase them?"

"No."

The detective made a mental note. Most people would erase unnecessary messages unless there was some other reason to keep them . . . like an alibi. "Okay, so then you called over to her mom's?"

"That's right."

"Had they heard from her?"

"No. Not all day."