To Die For (2 page)

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No matter where you live in Canyon Lake, it's a nice, easy walk to either the golf course or the dock. But most residents of the private community just drive their golf carts. The massive development, ringed by 12-foot wall, and with 24-hour security posted at its three gates, was constructed around a meandering golf course and a man-made lake resembling a runny inkblot with dozens of fjords carved from the desert to give every homeowner a cul-de-sac
and
their choice of fronting either the lake or a chunk of the golf course. An equine wing of the development rambled along some low hills on its westernmost edge. A scattering of larger homes, tucked into the foothills off the main drive, would fetch upwards of a million dollars. Unlike most planned developments, where the only picturesque scenery exists in the minds of the builders who christen the streets, Canyon Lake supplied more than a vicarious whiff of boating, golf and horseback riding. The recreation-friendly scheme furnished planners with an abundant argot from which to choose street names and enhance the cheerful, theme-park feel of the development. Even the more moderately priced homes accessible from the main street boasted driveways brimming with boats, fully equipped RVs, tasteful off-road vehicles, sport utility vehicles and luxury cars.

Although residents were a mix of retirees, empty-nesters on the brink of retirement, and some young families, the most mature residents were the most visible. On streets pleasantly named Big Tee, Skipper's Way, Early Round Drive and Silver Saddle Court, white-haired women in helmeted coifs piloted late-model Cadillacs and Buicks, outnumbered only by deeply tanned, knobby-kneed men in shorts and caps scooting around in golf carts. This secure community, in the desert heat of California's Riverside County, gave upscale retirees the comfort of enjoying their sunset years in leisure.

Outside the gates of the resort community, life fell short of exquisite. But on a modest income, a good life in Riverside County could be had cheaply. Seventy-five miles from the greater Los Angeles basin, the area featured bargain real estate and a remote desert landscape that was linked to the city by Southern California's veinous freeway system. For the price of a hellish commute, families with entry-level incomes could afford comfortable homes. A latter-day gold rush in constructional had created boom towns out of sparsely populated patches, strung together by highways that sliced through miles of desert brush, spectacular spires of yucca blossoms, and sage. Huge developments sprung up from the hardscrabble desert floor, peppering the landscape with lookalike homes that queued up along preternaturally smooth blacktopped streets and displayed “Model House” banners. Strip malls, chain discount stores and fast-food joints galloped right behind the residential developers to service new homeowners. Homely towns anchored by dusty trailer parks, which never caught the eye of developers, slouched in the shadow of the gleaming new developments, their deeply rutted dirt roads—without street lights, curbs or even signs—leading to run-down grocery stores and well-used bars.

The unending parade of construction made the Inland Empire, which encompasses Riverside and neighboring San Bernardino Counties, among the fastest-growing regions in the country. But the influx of ex-suburbanites seeking mortgage relief upset the eco-system of native desert-dwellers—bikers, the poor, naturalists, retirees and criminals. To the FBI and the DEA, the Inland Empire houses the most active and dangerous of the nation's manufacturers and distributors of methamphetamine, a powerful, illegal stimulant that rivals cocaine in popularity. The desert's seclusion offered lawbreakers a unique opportunity to establish an underground industry of meth labs, whose distinctive chemical odor make them easy to sniff out in heavily populated areas. Along with the meth labs came a supporting cast of unsavory types that Canyon Lake builders had in mind when they put a wall around the private, monitored and guarded enclave.

11:45 A.M.

Inside job.

The minute he saw the gates to the private community, Deputy District Attorney Richard Bentley figured the killer knew how to get inside this place. Bentley paused his county cruiser at the guard shack long enough to flash his badge and get waved through. At 47, the ex-schoolteacher had a thick wave of strawberry blonde hair and a gap-toothed smile that gave him a boyish look. Bentley drove slowly through the development looking for the address on Continental Way.

Canyon Lake. He'd heard of it, but had never been inside. He knew it was an upscale neighborhood of mostly elderly residents. Not uber-rich, just a nice part of the world next to some not-so-nice areas. It made sense that they'd want gates around it. He assumed the other two entrances also had gates and 24-hour guards.

Turning the corner, he saw the familiar yellow tape and a clump of black-and-whites. A team of criminalists in a Department of Justice van pulled up as he parked. Bentley recognized Ricci Cooksey, a senior criminalist, as he hopped out and removed his field kit from the van, his ever-present flashlight crooked under his arm, but he didn't recognize the woman with Cooksey. The Riverside County ID techs had also just arrived in a county truck. The coroner's van was already there. Not the meat truck, which would come later, but the tech van. Inside the yellow tape was a tiny white-haired woman, her head bowed, being comforted by friends. That must be either a relative or the person who found the body, Bentley thought. He didn't see any gawking neighbors standing in clusters, the way they did at most scenes, just some gardeners working across the street, occasionally glancing at the police activity. Bentley caught up with Cooksey, who introduced his trainee.

“What have we got?” Cooksey said by way of greeting.

“Elderly woman stabbed upstairs,” said Bentley.

Cooksey nodded. The big brown condo was one of 19 two-story look-a-likes dotting a horseshoe-shaped driveway off Continental Way. The backyards on this end of the drive sloped downward to a stretch of private lakefront called “Indian Beach.” Even on a weekday morning, a few people were out in their boats.

Bentley started to see faces as he got closer to the condo. From his stint at the Perris branch of the DA's office, he recognized Detective Joe Greco of the Perris Police Department, talking with the two officers who had arrived first at the scene. Greco looked worried. Heck, Bentley thought, for a homicide detective, he looked
young.
With his slight frame and dark, wavy hair, Greco could easily pass for a college student, almost for a high school student. He tried to look older by wearing a moustache, but he could barely coax a few hairs to grow there. Bentley had been told that Greco had a wife and at least two kids, with another one on the way.

Bentley knew Greco was waiting for him to arrive. The detective couldn't have handled many, if any, homicides. But requesting another detective was futile—there were no veteran homicide detectives with Perris P.D. At 25,000 people, Perris was barely large enough to have its own police force. It had only been a few months since Perris P.D. took over the contract for police services at Canyon Lake, handling its major crimes and leaving routine patrol duties to its private security force. The district attorney's office had its lawyers make suggestions and answer questions for the investigating officer at any homicide. Bentley, who had worked at the Perris sub-station, knew Greco as a solid detective and tried to put him at ease with some gallows humor.

“Hey, I had plans this afternoon,” Bentley said, walking up to Greco. “You guys are messing up my day.”

Greco greeted Bentley with a handshake and a nervous smile, then told him what he'd seen inside. Within a few minutes, the ID techs, the criminalists, the deputy coroners, the officers, and the sergeant formed a loose huddle around the postage stamp–sized front yard for the briefing. Officer Lance Noggle, the first officer at the scene, ran down the facts in official jargon. Greco added a few details and Bentley asked some questions.

“O.K., let's go in and take a look,” Greco said. Like a herd, the group followed Greco and Cooksey toward the condo. Hanging plants in a tasseled, macrame holder decorated the small front porch. From outside the front door, one could see the dining room and kitchen straight ahead. The stairs were to the left.

“Wait!”

It was Cooksey. The processional stopped. From the porch, he reached around with a latex-gloved hand and flicked off the interior light switch, darkening the entryway. Taking his flashlight out from under his arm, he bent down by the front door and shined the beam at the parquet floor in the entryway, a nice oak plank, and focused the beam at an angle. When Greco bent down, he saw what Cooksey was looking at in the beam of the flashlight.

“It's a Nike,” Cooksey said, recognizing the distinct trademarked swoosh on the sole. It was as if someone had sprinkled dust in a perfectly stenciled sole of an athletic shoe. The shoe print was aimed at the kitchen.

Cooksey knew that anyone who walked into that house would have had to step in that entryway. It had just been a hunch. He'd been to enough crime scenes to know that there was always a rush to get to the body. Not today.

Everyone backed out of the entryway. Cooksey walked back to the DOJ van and dug out a stack of chemically treated paper sheets and something that looked like a foot-square sponge to take shoe impressions. One by one, the officers, the sergeant supervisor and Greco—everyone who'd been inside the condo—stepped on the chemical sponge and stepped on the paper, making a shoe impression to show what he already knew would result. No swoosh.

As Cooksey was busy with the shoe impressions, the county crime lab techs set up a tripod directly over the print and aimed the camera lens downward toward the print. They adjusted the settings to take true-to-life prints that forensic shoe print experts could use to compare prints at the crime scene with those made by a suspect's shoes. Cooksey returned to his van to get what looked like a thin sheet of firm Jell-O suspended in plastic. When the crime techs were done taking photos, Cooksey peeled off one layer of the plastic wrap and unfurled the gelatin directly onto the print with rhythmic strokes using a fingerprint roller. Then he gently pulled the gelatin sheet from the floor and saw an eerie shadow of dust clinging to it—deposited, perhaps, by a killer.

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“There are some people here to see you.”

The officer nodded toward an older couple casually dressed in jeans and sneakers standing outside the yellow tape.

“The victim's family,” he said.

“Thanks,” Greco said, making his way toward the couple. “Go get Bentley.”

After the walk-through, everyone had been standing around outside the condo waiting for the crime-scene techs and Department of Justice criminalists to mark, photograph and collect the evidence, or anything Greco and Bentley thought might be evidence. The condo resembled a macabre tag sale. Numbered, goldenrod-colored evidence cards were propped up next to the blood-smeared chair on the landing, the ripped-out phone cord, the half-empty knife holder in the kitchen, Norma's pillboxes, her purse and the bloodstained afghan crumpled at her feet. On the walk-through, Greco and Bentley had reviewed with the criminalists and lab techs what to photograph and what to collect. Greco took photos with his own camera and wrote meticulously detailed notes. He took the time to write neatly—there was no rush and he wanted to be able to read his notes in the morning. When one of the patrol officers offered Greco the use of his own video camera, Greco borrowed it to film the crime scene.

Bentley walked slowly around the outside of the condo, tossing out the usual areas for the officers to cover—he suggested they door-knock the neighborhood to ask about unusual incidents or cars, and if residents knew anyone who had been upset or angry with Norma. An earlier check by officers inside and outside the condo had revealed that there were no obvious footprints in the mud outside the windows or doors, no trampled shrubs, no broken windows, no tamper marks in the doorjambs—no forced entry. Bentley had wanted to see the property for himself. If this case ever came to trial, he preferred using photos to refresh his memory, not supplant it. When the techs and criminalists had everything photographed, tagged and bagged, Greco and Bentley would go back in to examine the body in detail and to collect additional evidence, with the assistance of the coroner's investigator, who would prepare the remains for transport to the autopsy.

Greco stepped under the crime-scene tape, walked over to the couple, introduced himself and expressed his condolences. When Bentley arrived a moment later, he did the same. Jeri and Russell Armbrust said they lived nearby in Canyon Lake and had driven up to find out what had happened, and to see if they could help. Bentley suggested they speak in the couple's car, since it was chilly and had just started to sprinkle. The Armbrusts took them to their white Cadillac, parked at the curb, which would also offer some privacy.

As Greco and Bentley climbed into the back seat, both spotted Jeri Armbrust's white sneakers—Nike—and exchanged glances.

Neither Bentley nor Greco told them any details about the murder except to say that it was “pretty bad.” Questions came from both the front and back seats. Who found her? Was it a burglar? The detective and the DA wanted to know when they had last seen Norma and whether she would let a stranger into the house.

Jeri was the closest to Norma and did most of the talking. She wept some, but remained calm, unlike some of the hysterical victims both Greco and Bentley had seen at crime scenes over the years.

Jeri was Norma's ex–daughter-in-law and had stepped up to take care of Norma in her later years, even though they were not blood relatives. Norma had suffered from several serious health problems and was recovering from triple-bypass surgery last fall. Up until a few weeks earlier, two registered nurses had taken turns with in-home check-ups during her recuperation. Jeri said the last time she had come over was at 6 p.m. on Sunday to drop off groceries. She'd put the groceries away and left, assuming Norma was upstairs watching TV—the volume had been up full blast, as usual, because Norma was hard of hearing. Jeri said the TV was so loud, she couldn't wait to get out of the house.