The Victim (34 page)

Feds loved biker gangs. Any arrest that could link an illegal activity to a motorcycle club qualified for the holy grail of prosecution—a RICO bust. The law permitting the prosecution of a racketeer influenced and corrupt organization and its membership was the stuff that legends—and DOJ careers—were made of.

“
So Lola Munson’s father is killed by his own biker brothers two months before she’s born?”

“
Never confirmed but never dispelled either. Mom’s sixteen going on seventeen; family disowned her for getting pregnant by this convicted felon. Now he’s dead. She has a tenth-grade education and no marketable skills. The details get a little sketchy here, but according to reports, she moved right after Danny was killed. She told people she thought the Romans were going to come after her, too. Her paranoia wasn’t too far off the mark. Her neighbors apparently saw Harleys creeping up and down her street for months.”

“
She stayed in Phoenix?”

Jack shrugged. “She had nowhere else to go.”

Jack went on to explain that Lola and her mother continued to move from one place to the other. They would stay with a friend until their company became too much to bear and then they would move on. Sometimes they slept in their car when public housing wasn’t available. Homeless shelters were good short-term solutions. The rest of the time they would shack up with whichever pill-popping, child-molesting boyfriend she was dating at the moment, the ones that would sneak into Lola’s room while her mother was passed out cold on the couch, still clutching a half-empty bottle of Old Crow.

“
She ran away for the first time, at least the first time that was documented, when she was twelve. About five, six more times before her fifteenth birthday. Child Protective Services was making routine visits. By this time, Lola’s mother was actually holding down a job working concessions at what used to be called BankOne Ballpark. She was able to rent a little house for them out in Central Phoenix. Lola had become incorrigible at this point: shoplifting, possession of marijuana, fighting. She had amassed quite a juvenile record. I think she even got sent away to a juvey facility when she was sixteen or seventeen.”

“
If this girl’s a habitual runaway, a thousand things could have happened to her.”

“
I hammered the runaway angle to the jury, but the judge granted the government’s motion
in limine
to preclude mention or introduction of her juvenile criminal record. I could only talk about the fact that she had run away from home on several occasions, sometimes for weeks at a time. Drove her poor mother crazy. But couldn’t mention the drugs or the shoplifting or anything of that sort. Unfortunately, the runaway angle played into the government’s theory of the case. They didn’t sugarcoat their victim. Lola Munson was a troubled girl. Dropped out of high school after her junior year. Ultimately she left home. Ended up almost a hundred miles away with a meth-addicted mentally unstable drifter named Osvaldo Garcia. She’s seen in a hotel with him and another man. US Forest Service gets a tip that he’s camping out nearby and they take him in.”

“
What other man?”

Jack shook his head, implying that the question had been asked and answered a long time ago. “Another drifter, former Navy SEAL named Earl Simpson. Also a meth head like Ozzie. Seemed as though they had been traveling together when they hooked up with Lola.”

“
Did you—?”

Jack furiously nodded. “
Yes
, tried to locate him back in ’03, believe me. He had an open felony warrant from another county and disappeared on us. Didn’t turn up until after the trial when he got arrested on the warrant. Ended up doing a stretch I believe. Anyway, Ozzie’s appellate attorney was able to get a statement out of Simpson while he was serving time in prison. She tried to argue that Simpson’s testimony constituted newly discovered evidence but the Ninth ruled that it wouldn’t have affected the outcome of the case.”

“
Did you argue the possibility that Simpson could have been Lola’s killer?”

“
Of course. I threw every goddamn thing I could at the wall and nothing stuck. I’m telling you the confession sunk him. That and the prior incident.”

Anton perked up. “Prior incident?”

“
Garcia was a registered sex offender. Three years before Ozzie was arrested on the murder, he and this girl were getting high somewhere in Albuquerque. Anyway, he propositions her for sex in exchange for meth. She agrees. Cops see a shot-to-hell Corolla with a cracked tail lamp and the dome light on, parked behind a Foodtown after business hours. Cop approaches the window, shines his MagLite in the car, sees this girl bouncing on his lap, skirt hiked up to her thighs. Pulls ’em both out of the car. Finds a little less than half a gram of crystal meth, a glass pipe, and a condom wrapper. Checks the girl’s ID. She’s only sixteen. Ozzie pleads to the cop that he thought she was well into her twenties. I mean, this girl was a serious meth head. Had the scabbed-up face you’d see in an anti-drug commercial. But by law she was a child. Case ultimately fell apart but not before Garcia served six months in county. His family had had enough of him and refused to post his bond. Figured at least in county, he would be fed, clothed, and free of drugs. Dumbass went through withdrawal right there in the Bernalillo County Jail infirmary.

“
The DA offers him a plea. Drops the charge from criminal sexual penetration to statutory rape—as if one’s better than the other. In exchange for a guilty plea to the amended charge, he’s convicted and given credit for time served. But he’s made a sex offender in the process. Has to register with the county and everything. The AUSA in the murder case obviously found out about this and used it against him at trial. Even located the girl and brought her in to testify. Judge allowed it all, claimed it showed evidence of preparation, intent, lack of mistake, you name it.”

Anton felt a chill tingling his arms. His hairs stood on end.

“
The same thing’s happening in Bryan’s case. Gets arrested for a crime with facts similar to those from something in his past. It’s the kiss of death. At least my guy never confessed. So what’s Osvaldo Garcia’s story?”

“
If I recall the dates correctly, Lola Munson was reported missing by her mother on March 12, 2003. Two days later, someone vaguely matching her description is seen with Garcia and Simpson at a motel just north of Payson. Now of course there are conflicting reports that there were several young girls present with the men believed to be Garcia and Simpson. Cops start combing the area looking for them, broadcasting their pictures all over the local news as persons of interest. As you can imagine, the search was mainly for Garcia on account of his sex offender designation. This guy Simpson was a petty criminal drug addict. Anonymous call comes in on the morning of the 16th. Forest Service picks him up and the rest is history. FBI comes in and interrogates him for seven hours before he admits that he strangled her and buried her in the forest but couldn’t remember where. A missing persons case becomes a homicide. They look for weeks but can’t find a body. Again, we’re talking three million acres.”

“
I was living in Tempe at the time and I don’t remember hearing anything about this.”

“
You wouldn’t. It was second tier news outside of Payson. Remember, the war in Iraq had just started, and besides, this was poor white trash. A persistent runaway with a drunk for a mother and a dead convict father. The media loves missing white girls, but they have to be pretty, picturesque, and at least upper middle class. Think Elizabeth Smart. Natalee Holloway. Both beautiful lily-white blondes from good neighborhoods, from presumably decent, well-to-do families. The SUV-driving, Starbucks-sipping suburban moms who buy magazines have to be able to identify with these girls. That they could be their own daughters. Nobody gives a jolly green fuck about girls like Lola Munson. Americans can accept tragedy when it befalls the poor.”

“
When’s the last time you tried to find Earl Simpson?”

Jack pursed his lips in thought, drumming his fingers on the desktop. “Seven, eight years ago?”

Anton got up and stepped around Jack’s desk. He brought up Google on Jack’s computer and conducted a search for
earl simpson arizona.

Almost 70,000,000 results came up. Obituaries, LinkedIn profiles, Facebook pages. There was a Yelp review for Dr. Earl Simpson, a dentist in Bisbee.

“
A whole lot’s changed in the past ten years,” Anton said, hunched over Jack’s desk. White reflections of the computer screen glimmered in his eyes. He modified his search parameters. “Everyone can be Googled. There’s always at least something floating around the Internet with your name on it.”

Jack sat back in his chair. “If he’s still alive.”

“
You said he was a Navy SEAL?”

“
Uh huh.”

Anton searched for
earl simpson arizona navy seal.

A little under 5,000,000 results. But the first organic result caught his attention.

The blue title tag read
sermon on the mount residential treatment center - rehabilitating the valley of the sun since 1974.

In the description beneath it,
Earl Simpson
and
Navy SEAL
stood out in bold print.

Anton clicked on the link. The website was
www.sermononthemountaz.com
.

The website was cheap, fraught with low-resolution graphics. It looked like something out of the late nineties. A photo of a nondescript split-level home was displayed in the center of the page. A neatly kept lawn adorned the front of the property, framed by low-cut hedges running along the walkway. A rose patch alongside the anterior wall was in full bloom. No doubt gardening was used as a form of therapy, a distraction from thoughts of getting high.

The requisite social media buttons were on the bottom of the homepage. You could like them on Facebook and follow them on Twitter.

Anton clicked the
about us
tab on the top of the page. A brief synopsis explained that Sermon on the Mount was a faith-based drug treatment program that offered thirty-, sixty-, and even ninety-day inpatient programs. A disclaimer indicated that Sermon on the Mount was registered as a 501(C) organization, meaning that it was considered a tax-exempt entity. A far cry from private $30,000 per month rehab facilities Anton had seen with some of his higher-end DUI clients—the kind that offer therapeutic seaweed wraps and yoga on the beach.

Anton clicked on the
who we are
tab. A page loaded displaying an arrangement of photographs of the center’s counselors, next to each was a small biographical paragraph. Anton scrolled down the page until he saw him.

He was seated for the photo, which looked like it was snapped on a smart phone. Not a tightly cropped headshot done by a professional. He was in his fifties although he could have passed for much older. He was bald and wore a neatly trimmed white goatee. He had unusually wide shoulders for such a thin man. Anton imagined that at one time his frame was thick with muscle, before the meth whittled him down to skin and bone.

The bio explained that Earl Simpson, a former Navy SEAL who had done tours of duty in the Persian Gulf and Somalia before working for private military companies, had first come to Sermon on the Mount during 2007 as a condition of his probation upon release from prison. After turning over his life to God and adhering to the 12-step program, Earl became a counselor.

Anton quickly got the feeling that this wasn’t celebrity rehab. This wasn’t some hugs and kisses facility in the hills of Malibu. Dr. Drew Pinsky would probably get his ass kicked if he even thought about walking into a place like this.

This was hardcore. End of the line for the most desperate addicts. A place that took cases referred to them by the VA and the state probation department. An ex-con former hard-living addict like Simpson was the only kind of person who could get through to these people.

Anton scrolled to the bottom of the screen. The address was in Tempe.

“
You said conflicting reports said that Garcia and Simpson may have been with several young girls at the motel?”

“
Yeah?”