A Checklist for Murder (14 page)

Thirty minutes after Steve Fisk logged his interview with Natasha, Robert Peernock checked into room 678 at Bally’s Hotel in Las Vegas. He registered under the name of “James Dobbs” from Sacramento.

“James Dobbs” paid for a special two-night package, which included a giant floor show downstairs in the
JUBILEE
! Theater. The show featured the Ziegfeld Follies—not the kind of attraction that most newcomers can resist. Fortunately for “James Dobbs,” he still had plenty of time to get himself situated in the room and grab some dinner before curtain time.

Dinner was brought to Tasha in her bed but she couldn’t make herself take anything in. She basically ate a vegetarian diet and wouldn’t have been attracted to standard hospital fare under the best of circumstances, but now her appetite was completely gone. Even though her awareness had returned and her thinking was beginning to clear, she felt broken to pieces inside. It was as if a thousand thin crystal wires had been shattered within her; they now lay in shards around
her heart. To even consider trying to recuperate and somehow go on with her life made her feel as if she were staring up at an endless wall of frozen rock, looking for a way to climb it bare-handed.

Where could she even begin? There was no one from her mother’s side living in this country. Claire had been the only one of thirteen children in her family who immigrated to America. The others hadn’t been all that close in recent years, anyway.

Somehow the idea of recuperating with Robert’s family didn’t hold a lot of appeal.

And in recent years, Robert and Claire’s dark homelife had kept any family friends at a distance. Since Tasha had just turned eighteen, she was no longer at an age where the state was going to help take care of her.

She had always been a dreamer, a quiet, creative personality who was long on appreciation for the abstract side of life but short on hardheaded life skills. Now she lay in bed silently playing back her memories of all the times that Claire had badgered her, speaking in her delicate French accent with the firm persistence of a mother who insisted on being heard.

“Tasha, you’re going to graduate from high school in a few months. What will you do with your life?”

“You know. I’m going to fashion-design school.”

“And that’s very nice, but it’s a hard way to make a living. What if it doesn’t work?”

“I don’t know. Who says it won’t work?”

“You won’t have anything to fall back on. You need skills of some kind. Do you want to have to rely on a man to take care of you?”

“No way. You know I’m not going to let that happen.”

Claire stopped and smiled, looked at her daughter with sad eyes as she continued softly. “Natasha … I won’t always be here, you know. And I don’t ever want you to have to stay
with a man just because you’re afraid of how you would take care of yourself if you try to leave.”

Of course, Claire had learned through years of personal experience how important independence can be when the primary relationship in your life goes sour, turns toxic, and eventually becomes lethal.

Even though they never had the chance to resolve the argument, Tasha realized that one way or the other she was independent now.

At 9:00
P.M.
that night Steve Fisk was putting in some overtime by drawing up search warrants. A case like this made the long hours easy. The idea of a man binding his beautiful girl so that he could slam her head with a blunt instrument and douse her with gasoline was enough to puncture instantly through the armor that cops are required to keep around their feelings.

Fisk also prepared a second warrant, aimed at the condo where Peernock had been living with his girlfriend, so that simultaneous searches could take place by surprise. You can never be too careful, he explained later. Who could tell what kinds of things the man could have left lying around, things that might explain exactly why Robert Peernock hadn’t bothered to keep his appointment at the police station this morning, things that might offer some clue as to where Robert Peernock was hiding at that very moment?

Bally’s Las Vegas proudly presents Donn Arden’s
JUBILEE
! “The Stage Experience of a Lifetime” produced, directed, and conceived by Donn Arden!

This lavish extravaganza of gorgeous “Singing and Dancing Ladies and Men” boasts special appearances by “those famous Bally’s Girls,” known the world over for their beauty.

“James Dobbs” sat in the dark amid a packed crowd of
gamblers and pleasure seekers whose attention was fixed upon the gala review onstage. The audience was composed, presumably, of people who had come from around the world to pack the house and marvel at the feathered fannies of Bally’s Dancing Ladies and the strategically emphasized bulges of Bally’s Dancing Men.

People queue up early to get the good seats. Thus Robert Peernock, alias “James Dobbs,” did not need to fear recognition from others in the crowd. Eyes generally remain fixed onstage throughout the show’s seven acts; Peernock/Dobbs remained anonymous in the dark, but outside the bright city lay waiting.

He was, after all, a brand-new bachelor in Las Vegas, Nevada. He had a suitcase stuffed with cash and plenty of time to kill. The brightly lighted, flashing and winking, feather-fannied, silicon-stuffed town spread itself out before him.

It offered absolutely no resistance at all.

CHAPTER

10

T
asha awoke with a jolt in the hospital bed. This time the nightmare was the kind that ended when she opened her eyes. The face staring down at her was not her father’s but that of her friend Patricia, who had returned to the room to be with her and to stay as long as it would take.

“We’re lucky they let me in here, Tash,” Patty whispered. “You’re not supposed to have visitors this late.”

Tasha tried to think of the usual kind of sarcastic, joking reply in the spirit of conversations she and Patty used to have. She couldn’t form the words. She tried simply to smile, but her lips wouldn’t spread far enough.

So she just nodded slightly. Patty took that in, then nodded along with her and giggled, glancing back at the door as if they were two conspirators who had just put one over on the hospital system.

The invisible lines between them began to crackle as the energy of their friendship danced back and forth.

“Whoa. You look like the Elephant Man,” Patty teased, forcing a little laugh. But Tasha didn’t smile at that one, either, so Patty dropped it.

“Patty,” Tasha whispered, taking Patty’s arm and squeezing it weakly, “… where’s my mom?’

Patty froze at the question. The nurses had made it plain to her that before they would give her full-time visiting privileges, Patty had to agree to play ball with them about how to handle that question. Patty was nineteen years old and had never had to tell someone that a family member had been
murdered. And now her friend Tasha was looking up at her strangely, as if trying to read Patty’s silence.

Finally Tasha added, “I keep asking them but they give me the same stuff … like ‘You can see her later.’ And I’m all, ‘Yeah, but how is she?’ … And they just keep saying … ‘You have to see her later.’”

Patty knew that Tasha wasn’t the type who trusted a lot of people; she made friends slowly. And even though Patty was by far the more gregarious, each valued the fact that she could absolutely believe what the other said to her. Absolutely.

“Well, Tash …” She hesitated. The pause grew longer.

And she knew right then that she couldn’t tell. The nurses had warned her that Tasha’s mental state was so fragile right now that the news of her mother’s death might push her over the edge. They warned that if she didn’t help them protect Natasha from the truth until she was strong enough to handle it, Patty could wind up being responsible for her friend’s failure to recover.

That thought scared the hell out of her. Both girls had some measure of experience with lies of convenience, told to teachers to excuse late homework or to parents to get them off your back. This was Patty’s first encounter with a lie of mercy.

“She’s … in a room just down the hall, Tash. You can see her later on. I mean, she has to rest for a while. Hey”—Patty touched Tasha’s arms again, wondering where else she could touch her that wouldn’t hurt—“come on. Give it some time. You guys were both pretty badly torn up.”

Tasha thought about it for a moment, staring into Patty’s eyes. Finally she nodded. That little smile started moving through her lips again. And even though her lips were swollen to several times their normal size, this time the smile almost felt okay.

•   •   •

At 1:45 in the morning on the twenty-fourth, less than forty-six hours after the wreck was first discovered, Judge Michael Luros of the San Fernando Superior Court was awake and working. He signed the search warrant for Claire’s house and another for Soma’s condo.

By 4:00
A.M.
, forty-eight hours after the report of the wreck, teams of detectives were at both locations looking for anything that might provide solid evidence of just what had taken place at the Peernock residence two nights before. Fisk and Castro led the search at the Peernock house. The first part was easy; check for the items on the warrant. Look for obvious things: a bloody shoe, a weapon of some kind.

But Fisk soon realized that more warrants would be needed, more trips would soon be made back to the Peernock house. Because even though Peernock hadn’t lived there in years, he still kept an office area jammed with files and stacks of papers. Any part of it could offer clues. Any scrap could point to answers. Fisk realized with dismay that he was looking at dozens, perhaps hundreds of hours spent sifting. And in a society growing more violent every day, time is a homicide cop’s most expensive luxury, the least available commodity that he has. Therefore, even as important as these paper searches might prove to be, they were likely to have to take a backseat.

For the moment Fisk needed hard evidence of exactly what could have happened to a mother and daughter whose injuries were identical, save for the fact that the daughter survived because she was able to thrash her head from side to side, just enough to protect her skull from the fatal fractures that took her mother’s life.

At 8:45
A.M.
on July 24, the autopsy of Claire Peernock began. Steve Fisk attended personally. If anything should be discovered that might help bring about the apprehension of the suspect, and thereby assure the survival of Natasha Peernock,
he wasn’t about to sit around waiting for a phone call to find out.

The result came quickly and the findings were conclusive. Death had occurred as a result of blows from a blunt instrument wielded with great force. A fist-sized bruise had been inflicted on the left side of her face at some time prior to death. A smaller bruise was on the right wrist, judged to be a defensive wound suffered either in pulling against wrist restraints or reflexively shielding her face from the blows that had killed her.

A murder warrant was issued on Robert John Peernock.

Later on in the morning of July 24, “James Dobbs” mailed a letter from Las Vegas to Foothill Savings in Los Angeles. He wrote under the name of Robert Peernock, acting under instructions he had obtained from the bank during a phone call earlier that same day. He ordered the three Peernock accounts there to be closed, two of which were trusts for his children. The three new accounts were opened with Sonia Siegel’s name added to them, giving her access to his money there and allowing her to write checks on his behalf as well as to bring in deposits of any rent receipts she might collect for him from his income properties.

At this point Sonia knew nothing of Peernock’s efforts on her behalf regarding his cash flow; she didn’t find out until the bank told her some days later. At this point all she knew was that the man in her life had gone to the hospital to see his injured eighteen-year-old daughter the morning before and had never returned. His eleven-year-old daughter remained with her and by now was asking questions that Sonia had no idea how to answer. By the time that the Department of Social Services took custody of the girl and drove off with her later in the day, the Old Sinking Feeling was no doubt getting hard for Sonia to ignore.

•   •   •

“Where were you?” Tasha murmured when Patty walked back in the room. “I woke up and there was nobody here.”

“Oh, some nurse came in a while ago and lost her mind because I was sleeping on the floor by your bed. So I walked down to the gift shop to get out of her way.”

“Like that?” She looked at Patricia, standing there in pajamas and slippers, no makeup, hair all stringy. In for the duration. Tasha laughed weakly, trying not to open her mouth so far as to draw in air over her sensitive, broken teeth.

“So?” Patty replied breezily. “It’s not like they never see anybody in pajamas around here. Besides, at least I’m not walking around in one of their stupid gowns with my butt hanging out the back.”

“Maybe you should try it,” Tasha said with that odd expression that Patty had realized was the closest she could come to a smile right now. “I hear it’s a good way to meet guys.”

Patty laughed at that. Tasha couldn’t join in with her, but her eyes locked onto Patty’s and Tasha could feel the laughter almost as if it were her own. It lifted the dark gray cloud off her heart for a few seconds.

In that brief moment of strength, Tasha considered telling Patricia that she had realized her mother must be dead. There was no more reason to cover it up. After all, she had barely survived, but was still being allowed visits from a friend, so why wouldn’t she be able to see her own mother—if Claire were alive too? It made no sense. The you can-see-her-later line rang hollow.

There was no other conclusion left. Robert had gotten her mother. Tasha almost spoke up, but she swallowed the impulse. She decided it would be better just to leave it alone.

The gray cloud hanging over her thickened. It wrapped around her like a wet wool blanket, squeezing out all the light.