Disturbed Ground (12 page)

Judy was convinced that the mysterious Don Anthony had penned this clumsy letter, and she cynically noted how he'd tried to cover his blunders on the phone by signing both Michel and Miguel. It was almost laughable. But the implication concealed in the last line made her wince: Bert would be gone for Christmas; she shouldn't expect to see him again.

By the time her Friday, November 11, appointment with Detective Cabrera arrived, alarm was buzzing through Judy like too much caffeine. She and Beth shared a few tense moments out in the van as Judy tried to persuade her co-worker to come inside and lend emotional support. Reluctantly, Beth agreed, and the two marched solemnly into police headquarters.

Inside, they were greeted by Detective John Cabrera, a compact
man with a fresh, boyish face, who directed them to a small room and asked them to wait. They perched on their chairs, discussing Bert's disappearance in worried tones, speculating about what Dorothea had done with him, declaring that the police had better
do something,
because if they didn't, Judy was going to call Congressman Matsui and newspaper columnist Pete Dexter.

Cabrera meanwhile tape-recorded their conversation, listening to their intense whispers and gauging their sincerity. About half an hour of eavesdropping apparently eased his skepticism, for the detective finally invited them into his office, and they settled down to business.

Cabrera read Judy's letter from "Miguel" and listened to her fret about Don Anthony, whom she feared was working as Puente's accomplice. But Cabrera didn't seem to think Anthony was much to worry about; he was more interested in Dorothea Puente. He disclosed that Puente had a substantial criminal record. Forgery. Theft. Drugging and robbing elderly victims. (He didn't mention that Sacramento police had received complaints about Puente some months earlier—theft of Social Security checks, even allegations of murder. Since the source of those complaints had been an ex-con, they hadn't given them much credence.)

"What I'm most worried about is Alberto," Judy was saying. "He might still be in Mexico, just lost, so I hope you can find him. Here's a written description of him," she said, passing him a sheet of paper with a description that she and others at Detox had labored over. Then, handing him a videotape, she added, "This might help, too. It's a video I made of Bert and some other homeless people. It's not the best, but I thought maybe you could take a picture off this and make posters." Her voice hopeful. "You know, missing person posters? So you can distribute them?"

Detective Cabrera accepted these without voicing his misgivings. Having handled missing persons and homicides since 1982, he knew that transients sometimes just wandered off, and he wouldn't have ordinarily bothered much with a stray like Bert Montoya…. But this time, things were shaping up differently. Now there was not only a missing person, but the "holes" in the yard that John Sharp had described.

A tall, bespectacled man appeared in the doorway. Federal Parole Agent James Wilson introduced himself and took a seat, explaining that he'd been assigned to Puente's case only a couple of weeks earlier. Wilson had brought along Puente's file, including reports, newspaper clippings, and various notes.

As he pulled out papers, Judy Moise squinted at someone's handwritten entry: "I went over to see Dorothea and she was planting about twenty tomato plants." It gave her the creeps.

Wilson admitted with apparent chagrin that Dorothea Puente—or Montalvo, as she was known—was violating the conditions of her parole by running a boardinghouse.

Puente had made a point of seeming extremely conscientious about staying on the right side of the law—calling her parole agents often, seeking permission for the least little out-of-town trip—and they'd believed she was genuinely repentant about her past offenses. Her sweet little old lady routine had lulled their vigilance. Though parole agents had visited the house more than a dozen times since her release from prison in the fall of 1985, none had discerned that she was anything but a boarder at 1426 F Street.

Cabrera explained that Jim Wilson would be accompanying him and his partner, Detective Terry Brown, to investigate Puente's residence. The men stood to go and Cabrera turned to the VOA partners, "Would you like to come along?"

Startled, they declined.

Out in the hallway, they encountered a jarring air of gaiety. In contrast to their mood, the two detectives seemed in jovial spirits as they prepared to requisition shovels. Their supervisor, Lieutenant Joe Enloe, was even wearing a humorous button, something like "I Dig Sacramento" (an allusion to Sacramento's biggest mass murder to date, the Morris Solomon case, in which several women were found buried around town). Apparently, the idea that anyone thought bodies were buried in Dorothea Puente's yard struck them as funny.

It was about 11:00
a.m
when police arrived at the neat blue-and-white house on F Street. Grandmotherly Dorothea Montalvo Puente politely greeted Detectives Cabrera and Brown and Federal Parole Agent Jim Wilson at the door.

"Sorry to bother you, Mrs. Puente. We're here to talk to you about Bert Montoya," Cabrera said.

The police officers had no warrant, but Puente didn't ask for one.
Instead, the landlady welcomed them inside and offered them candy, which they courteously declined.

In his most disarming manner, Cabrera conversed with Puente about Bert. The pale old woman seemed a bit flustered by all this bother, but she steadfastly maintained that Bert had left for Utah with his brother-in-law, and her boarders could verify this. In fact, Bert had phoned her just recently, she told them.

Oddly, Puente also raised the subject of another former tenant, Benjamin Fink. She volunteered that he'd left during the summer and had gone back to Marysville. Cabrera noted this, but saw little connection between Fink and the man he was seeking.

At one point, Jim Wilson let Puente know that she was violating parole by running a boardinghouse and by failing to disclose this source of income. She solemnly acknowledged this, and when he informed her that he would have to revoke parole, she only nodded, offering not a word of protest.

Within her rights, Puente could have balked at any time and expelled her "guests," yet she maintained a calm, cooperative attitude. When the officers said they wished to speak to some of her tenants, she said, "Certainly, yes, by all means," and the officers went off to question those they could find.

Cabrera, who later admitted he had "no idea what we were looking for," also requested permission to search her upstairs residence. Again, Puente consented.

In a bedroom, he spied an empty medicine vial, picked it up, and read the name on the prescription. "Who's Dorothy Miller?" he asked.

"She's a relative," Puente said. "She stayed with me not too long ago."

Cabrera accepted this, took the vial, and went on with his search.

When they'd finished with the house, one large, unexamined area remained: the yard. The group quietly assembled on the back porch, pulled outside as if by some magnetic apprehension. As delicately as one could, Cabrera broached the outlandish subject of possible graves and asked permission to do a little digging.

They had no warrant—Puente could have refused—but she granted permission. With a wave of her hand, this woman who had spent so much time and effort on her garden offered airily, "I don't know what's back there."

With that, the two detectives hurried out to their unmarked car and
returned in coveralls, carrying two short-handled shovels. Puente stood by and watched as they selected a likely-looking spot and started to dig. A chilly wind was blowing in with a promise of rain, but the men soon began to sweat from their labor. They took turns with the digging, one hole, then another.

Eventually, they had dug three exploratory holes in the backyard, but had found nothing but dark soil. It began to seem a bit ridiculous, even rude, gouging up this old lady's well-kept garden on the basis of some lame suspicions about "holes" in her yard.

Jim Wilson was having serious second thoughts when, shortly after starting on a fourth hole in a corner of the yard, his shovel found something peculiar. About eighteen inches down, the dirt yielded a white powder. He reached down, touched it, then sniffed his white fingertips. Lime.

If the digging had begun to seem routine, this broke the spell. Wilson began to dig with fresh intensity. Then he hit something. Calling over Brown and Cabrera, he prodded the thing with his shovel, pushing earth away from a dirty cloth object, steadily scooping out dirt until they could make out…what looked like material wrapped around a tree root.

They exchanged looks. Wilson scraped away more dirt, trying to dislodge it, but it wouldn't budge.

Finally Cabrera climbed down into the hole, wrapped his hands around the root, braced his feet, and yanked. It suddenly broke loose, and he pulled out what they all recognized as a leg bone.

CHAPTER 11

With the discovery of human remain in her yard, Dorothea Puente's impassivity yielded to apparent shock. "Oh my Lord!" she said, unlocking her crossed arms and pressing her palms to her milky-white cheeks.

The grim-faced officers meanwhile stood around the gaping hole, assessing the situation. Besides the bone, they'd identified a small, white tennis shoe, with the remains of a foot inside. Having discovered a grave site, they concurred that they should cease digging and report to their superiors before further disturbing any potential evidence.

Detective Brown hurried to the car and radioed headquarters. He reported what they'd unearthed and requested backup. City workers and some heavy equipment would be dispatched to the house. It was clear they were going to need more than mere muscle and a couple of shovels to excavate Puente's well-cultivated grounds.

And they were going to need more than a couple of gumshoes and a parole agent—with nary a warrant among them—to handle the technicalities, delicacies, and mechanics of the site. The coroner’s office was notified and both a forensic pathologist and a coroner's deputy promptly headed for F Street. Crime scene investigators were on their way. The district attorney's office was informed, and first one and then two forensic anthropologists were summoned to Sacramento to oversee the exhumation and help identify the skeletal remains.

In a few minutes police cars would start arriving, and the November stillness would be trampled underfoot along with Puente's flower beds. In the midst of this temporary calm, Detective John Cabrera shifted uneasily from foot to foot. They'd found human bones, but they were looking for Bert Montoya
,
and that tennis shoe seemed much too small for a man. Also, Montoya had been missing only since August—surely not enough time for such extreme decomposition, lime or no lime. Whose skeletal remains had they found?

Cabrera scrutinized the proper-looking landlady, who hovered nearby, distress playing across her porcelain features. Despite her criminal record, it was hard to believe this elderly lady could be involved in something so brutal as murder. Nonetheless, he determined to take her down to police headquarters for questioning.

Parole Agent Jim Wilson watched quietly as Detective Cabrera escorted Mrs. Puente to the unmarked car, put her in the passenger seat, and headed off toward the Hall of Justice. Wilson knew enough about this crafty old con to realize that she wasn't what she seemed, and after the morning's grisly discovery, he was relieved to see that the police had the situation in hand andthat she was being taken into custody. He'd have his report in first thing Monday morning, and by then the legal machinery would be up and humming.

Sitting alone in interview room number 5, Dorothea Puente looked small, old, and vulnerable. Her snow-white hair had been hastily combed, and before leaving the house she'd changed into a small-print dress with lace trim on the sleeves—not the tough sort of person usually positioned at the table in front of the secret video-camera concealed behind the air vent.

Now Detective Cabrera entered and bustled around solicitously, making sure she had water, asking if she were comfortable, speaking clearly so that his voice was easily picked up by the hidden microphone. He went over a few preliminaries for the record, then turned softly to the missing Mr. Montoya. "I need all the truth from you," he coaxed. "Now, his disappearance is very suspicious, I can tell you that." He started mildly, "There are a lot of inconsistencies in your statement."