A Checklist for Murder (13 page)

Was it a troubled sleep for Robert John Peernock at Sonia’s condo that night? He had been awake all the previous night and all that day. Depending on whose story you believe, he had either been working nervously in the backyard on his spray-painting project while fretting about why on earth his wife and daughter would steal his pride-and-joy Cadillac to go careening through the boondocks on a drunken wild ride (even though the two women never partied together and Claire had never been seen drinking by longtime friends or co-workers, and despite the fact that she was known to hate driving at night because of her eyes), or else he’d been up all night busily torturing his wife and daughter and setting
up their murder in a flaming car wreck using his pyrotechnic expertise with demonic skill and then hurriedly hiding the evidence and cleaning up the house during the wee hours while waiting for the bank doors to open later that morning.

Either way, a man’s got to get a little rest.

But did he sleep well, or was he haunted by the image of his daughter in the hospital, as he described seeing her to Sonia, lying in a coma brain-damaged, her head swathed in bandages? Did he toss and turn, fearing for the unknown fate of his estranged wife?

By 7:30 the next morning, Sonia says that Robert was up. At 8:00
A.M.
the police at Foothill Division confirm that Supervising Detective Ferrand spoke with a male caller who identified himself as Robert Peernock. He told Ferrand he was under the impression that Natasha Peernock had been in some kind of a traffic accident and was at Holy Cross Hospital. He wanted to know if the police had the identity of the other female in the car yet.

Ferrand answered that they didn’t, but that while Natasha was certainly in critical condition, she was expected to live. Ferrand assured Peernock he was not a suspect, but since he was the registered owner of the car and the father of the survivor, the police would very much like to have Robert come in and talk to them.

Ferrand does not recall Peernock saying anything at all about Natasha and Claire stealing his Cadillac on that night, or about their speeding away in the darkness with Claire waving that large bottle of whiskey that was later found next to her body with her fingerprints all over it.

Peernock claimed to have a ten o’clock appointment that morning to see his daughter, but he offered to come in on his way to Holy Cross Hospital. Detective Ferrand gave him directions to the station and Robert hung up, promising to be there by nine.

•   •   •

At 9:00
A.M.
on July 23, while Robert Peernock was supposed to be walking into the station to speak with the police, Tasha lay wide awake after a sleepless night. The morning light streamed through the window but without her contacts, every blurry shape that walked through the door of her room threatened to be her father, coming back to finish the job and silence the witness. Wherever he was at that moment, she had no doubt that he would come looking for her at some point. As her mind cleared with every passing hour, Tasha realized that her father had to try to kill her again. He had to do it soon, to crush out the story that smoldered inside her like a rope wick dipped in gasoline.

At 9:00
A.M.
of July 23, Robert Peernock was not at the Foothill police station as scheduled.

But records later proved that at 9:01
A.M.
he passed through the checkout line at Sav-On Drugs, where he purchased some inexpensive luggage.

At 9:02
A.M.
the Foothill police, who had not had the chance to interview Robert as they had hoped to do, were instead talking to Natasha’s friend Patty. She gave the first version that made sense out of the events leading up to the car wreck. Patty assured the police that she had not been with Natasha that night, as the police had already guessed, but she confirmed that the two young women had indeed planned to go out together. She described dropping off her friend late that afternoon and about their plans to go to Magic Mountain. She described calling the house and getting no live answer on the phone, the odd experience of hearing Robert Peernock’s voice on an answering machine and leaving message after message for Tasha until her concern rose to the point where she decided to drive over there with the guys. She described getting no answer at the door despite all of the family cars being parked there, despite the TV she could hear inside.

Lieutenant Ferrand thanked her, grateful for the first decent lead they had obtained so far. He immediately arranged for a detective to go back to the hospital later in the day and see if Natasha Peernock’s memory had cleared, to learn if she would tell a story remotely connected to the one he had just heard.

As soon as Robert bought his new luggage at Sav-On, he hurried to the bank and withdrew another $30,000 in cash from his new savings account, taking $10,000 of it in hundred-dollar bills. He left the other $11,000 on deposit and tried to give the new account manager a PO box for the account address. When the bank officer insisted that their policy was to use only actual street addresses, Robert gave Claire’s home as the official address for the account, not Sonia Siegel’s condo where he had lived full-time for nearly four years. He emphasized several times that he didn’t want any of the statements mailed to Claire’s place, but it wasn’t to be sent to Soma’s either; it was all to be sent to his PO box.

Robert listed his profession simply as “self-employed,” which was essentially true. He was currently living off the cash settlements from his various lawsuits, some of which he was still pursuing, plus $36,000 per year in rent receipts generated by his income properties. Those houses were now owned solely by Robert, having become eligible for being paid off free and clear by the mortgage insurance that was triggered the moment Claire Peernock breathed her last on the seat of Robert’s car.

Under the terms of Robert and Claire’s “Agreement” he was not allowed to transfer or dispose of any joint assets before that August 1 deadline, after which each of them would sail away into separate sunsets in a civilized divorce and a fifty-fifty split of assets. Nevertheless he was raiding
their assets within hours of her death even though nobody had reached him yet to tell him about it.

Later that same July 23 morning, as police sat wondering if Robert Peernock was going to make the appointment for which he was now very tardy, Peernock was on the other side of the city at Los Angeles International Airport scurrying toward the departure gate. He arrived just in time to board his nonstop flight for Las Vegas, Nevada.

Home of the high rollers.

CHAPTER

9

T
he blurry figure rushed toward Natasha’s bedside.

She braced herself—but this time no attack followed. No blows rained down on her, no shots were fired. Instead, as the approaching shape grew clearer, the sight was far from being anything Tasha had feared. It was Patricia, who immediately leaned over her and touched her arm tenderly and spoke in her familiar Valley-girl voice, trembling with pain at the sight of Tasha’s injuries.

Patty stood and tried to believe the information her eyes were taking in. If the nurse had not told her that this was her friend, she never would have known. The face was ripped and gouged as if Tasha had been chewed by an animal. Her lips were several times their normal size. Strangest of all, it looked to Patty as if Tasha was staring at her in shock and in fear, although both Tasha’s eyes were so swollen, it was impossible to be sure.

But relief was flooding through Natasha. Here at last was someone who felt to her as if they were from the same planet, who spoke a language that sounded like her own. She had never dreamed that the touch of fingers on her arm could be so wonderful or that any voice could be so reassuring. Now Tasha could finally open her emotions and let the tears come.

She could tell her story to one who would believe.

There would be others who would not. But for the moment a small measure of safety had stepped into this nightmare. Invisible lines of communication opened and began to carry energy between the two young women, reaching young Natasha
on levels far deeper than the surgeon’s scalpel had been able to touch.

At the same time another invisible line was beginning to appear between Tasha and a man she had never even met. He didn’t know it yet and neither did she, but his energy had already begun to link up with hers, spinning her story in another direction.

As soon as the accident investigators radioed from the scene that there was a fatality and evidence of possible foul play, Supervising Detective Ferrand had looked up the name of the next detective in the homicide rotation who was in line for an assignment. This was how the job of lead investigator on the Peernock case fell to Detective Steve Fisk.

Steve Fisk had joined the Air Force fresh out of high school, a born-and-raised California boy. Upon his discharge at the age of twenty-one, he had gone straight into the Los Angeles Police Department, following the footsteps of his father, a career officer who had risen through the ranks to the level of deputy chief. By the time Fisk got the Peernock case, he had lived another twenty-one years and spent his married life raising his four children not far from where he grew up himself.

Fisk tends to take a personal interest in the destruction that murderers wreak upon his community. A big, burly cop with reddish-brown hair and a thick mustache, he has a soft-spoken demeanor that disarms suspects who expect harsh treatment. But in the next instant he can flash a razor blade of anger through his eyes that makes hardened felons decide just maybe here is a cop they will want to play ball with. None of it requires yelling and screaming. Steve Fisk is the velvet hammer. Countless interview subjects have been surprised by his gentle demeanor but have gone home wondering what hit them.

At the crime scene, a single glance told him that the situation
was all wrong and only an idiot would believe an ordinary auto accident had taken place here.

Fisk went to the hospital himself to pick up the purse that the paramedics had taken away with Natasha. He saw that it belonged to Claire. He soon knew Natasha’s mother was dead, that the father Robert Peernock had not yet been accounted for, and that neighbors confirmed that Peernock had plenty of money. Fisk realized that if Peernock was indeed the culprit, then he had the means to vanish quickly, out of state, out of the country. And if that happened, Fisk’s twenty-one years on the force made him well aware how poor his chances would be of appropriating funds to launch a pursuit across international borders.

Natasha’s initial story had been taken under the worst of circumstances; she was hardly coherent. But Fisk knew that head wounds produce varying symptoms. Thoughts can clear. Memories can return.

So as Steve Fisk walked back into Holy Cross Hospital early in the afternoon of the twenty-third, less than a day and a half after the crimes, he was determined to come away knowing anything Natasha might tell him to help find out who had done this brutal thing so close to Fisk’s own station, right there on his home turf.

The case became personal for Steve Fisk right away.

When the big red-haired cop in a suit and tie showed up after lunchtime, Patty allowed herself to be chased out of the room so Tasha could be interviewed again. Patty didn’t know that part of the purpose of the interview was to check her own story against Tasha’s memory. It wouldn’t have mattered to her anyway. Let the cops do their jobs, she figured; she was on her way home to pick up a few things, including her pajamas.

Because once Patty got back to the hospital, she didn’t
plan on leaving again until Natasha could get out of there with her.

Tasha offered Steve Fisk answers much different from those she had given immediately after the wreck. Indeed, she had no memory of having given them. This time she spoke from a frame of reference much more conscious and alert.

Fisk started leading her through her story, one fact at a time, asking her to repeat things whenever her voice would dip to inaudible levels, having her go back over certain sequences if he had trouble following her.

But Tasha was frustrated beyond anything she had ever known. She could see the images clearly, could feel the emotions boiling inside her, and yet in her jumbled state it hurt to try to think on the detailed level that Fisk was demanding. She wanted to help all that she could, to do anything to bring her father in off the streets, but the images that had burned so deeply into her memory had to filter out along verbal pathways that weren’t yet fully restored. She began to feel herself drifting off, trying to float away from the relentless probing.

But Fisk persisted. And slowly, slowly, the basic story came out: the argument in the kitchen, the strangulation, the handcuffs, the face mask, the hours in the bedroom being force-fed alcohol.

It hurt Tasha to think. It hurt worse to say the words. Still, it was at this point, for the very first time, that she finally broke the lifelong family taboo against speaking out about the brutality at home. In the clearest terms she could manage, she told about that final explosive night in the house. There was no longer any reason to keep silent.

That first clear version of the key events on the night of the crimes was recorded with Fisk’s interview, completed and logged at 4:00
P.M.
on July 23. When he finally left the
hospital, he was on his way to seek a search warrant for the family house.

Although Tasha couldn’t tell for sure if she had found someone else to believe her, by the time it was over she had triggered a full-scale homicide investigation centering on her father as the prime suspect.

On Fisk’s way out, he had the head nurse make a notation that all visitors were to be monitored. Under no circumstances was her father to be allowed inside. No information was to be given over the phone about Natasha. Not to anybody. He then arranged with the LAPD to have a twenty-four-hour guard put on outside the door of the room. Whether or not Tasha had been believed, clearly someone had listened.